World War II

Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Big Picture, Small Picture: Context for Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, published March 31, 1969, follows anti-hero Billy Pilgrim, inspired by Edward Crone Jr., as he survives the Battle of the Bulge, German internment, and the Dresden firebombing, finally settling into a comfortable life as an optometrist in upstate New York.

American flag in front of a prison camp
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“So that the poem is an act of discovery”: An Interview with Brian Komei Dempster

Brian Komei Dempster received the 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry for his debut collection, Topaz (Four Way Books, 2013), which examines the experiences of a Japanese American family separated and incarcerated in American World War II prison camps. Through their interwoven narratives, his poems show us how the past never ends: it shapes and is…