Humanities Express

Teaching the Troops: McGraw and Hudgins Help Lead NEA´s Operation Homecoming

When the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) created Operation Homecoming, it asked two Ohio State faculty members to participate in this initiative that encourages U.S. troops to write about their wartime experiences. Erin McGraw and Andrew Hudgins, both of the English Department’s Creative Writing Program, were tapped last year to lead Operation Homecoming sessions at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

McGraw, best known for her short stories, and Hudgins, poet and essayist, conducted writing workshops for Marines recently returned from duty. McGraw explains that others on the base, however, were welcome. So, in addition to the troops, her workshop was attended by family members, support staff in the community, and at least one chaplain. “We talked about strategies of writing—like how to get started, the importance of keeping a journal, and what separates good writing from schlock,” says McGraw, adding that “on that last subject, they had more opinions than I did.”

For Hudgins, whose session was filmed by CNN and a number of local TV affiliates, the Lejeune workshop was a mini-version of what he does in his classes at Ohio State. “That does not involve telling people what to think,” he stresses, “but how to express what they think and feel—and to learn to think and feel more deeply through the precisions of art.”

McGraw admits that there have been questions about the wisdom of encouraging such expression among troops on active duty. “These are people who need to shut away their feelings if they´re going to be effective in combat,” she says. “Good writing, though, forces us to explore our feelings. We tried to help them find ways to note the details that will help them find their way back to those feelings later, when they can fruitfully examine them.”

Both McGraw and Hudgins say they would readily take part in future Operation Homecoming workshops, if funding permits them to continue. Meanwhile, the NEA has set up a website for troops to submit fiction, essays, poetry, letters, and other writings related to recent military service. The best examples will be published in an anthology, with proceeds going to military charities.