Writing Seminar for Veterans and Military Families—2017

Tina M. Beller

Tina M. Beller is a full-time college student at SUNY Empire State College pursuing her bachelor’s degree in cultural studies with a concentration in creative writing. She served the Army in both her soldier and civilian capacities for 18 years before her retirement in January 2017.

Beller studied English at Pennsylvania State University and journalism at the Defense Information School, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, in 1998. She graduated from the Public Affairs Officer Qualification Course in 2006. Beller has been published in many military and civilian circles, including The New Yorker magazine and the national bestseller “Operation Homecoming.” She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Pamela Campos-Palma

Pamela Campos-Palma is an U.S. Air Force veteran who served as an operations intelligence analyst specializing in geopolitical analysis and counterviolent extremism, with duty in Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She has served as a gubernatorial appointee in the state of Oregon and works on issues of global peace and security, equity, empowerment, and civic participation.

She graduated from NYU with a master’s in public administration focused in international policy and management, and she was named a “Top 40 Under 40 Latinos in Foreign Policy” by Huffington Post. Campos-Palma is also a member of Beyond the Choir and the Truman National Security Project’s defense council, and is the executive director of Common Defense and an alumna of Veterans in Global Leadership. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Joy Craig

Joy Craig is an emerging writer and activist focused on veterans and women’s issues. She’s retired from the Marine Corps after 23 years of service as an aviation ordnance officer and drill instructor. During her service she was awarded the Navy Commendation and Meritorious Service medals.

After years of technical writing, Craig rediscovered her love of creative writing upon retirement. She’s spent the past two years penning the forthcoming memoir, “Men Behaving Badly,” focusing on her experiences in the Marine Corps. Craig is a native Californian residing in the South Carolina Lowcountry with her two daughters. She donates her time coaching DragonBoat Beaufort and is a member of the Leadership Beaufort program. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Teresa Fazio

Teresa Fazio is a former Marine Corps communications officer. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Task and Purpose, Vassar Quarterly, Consequence Magazine, Penthouse, and the anthologies “Retire the Colors” and “The Road Ahead.” Her awards include the Consequence Magazine Fiction Prize, Words After War Submission Contest, and a fellowship at Yaddo. Her unpublished memoir, “Unbecoming,” was a finalist for the 2015 Autumn House Nonfiction Contest.

Fazio holds a Ph.D. in materials science from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in physics from MIT, and she is an MFA candidate at the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in New York City. She is a 2017 and 2018 War Horse fellow.

Annie Erling

Annie Erling Gofus is a writer living in Washington, D.C., with her husband and dog. Gofus earned a bachelor’s in history from North Dakota State University and spent the first two and a half years of her career working with oral histories and archives at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Gofus is proud to be the wife of a U.S. Army Captain. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Rob Henderson

Rob Henderson graduated high school in Red Bluff, California. He is an Eli Whitney scholar at Yale University, where he studies psychology. He served in the U.S. Air Force as an electronic warfare technician for eight years. Most of his service was spent in Europe and the Middle East.

Henderson is a research assistant at the Yale Mind and Development Lab, where he explores the nature of language, thought, and moral reasoning. He will also perform research this summer at the Social Learning Lab at Stanford University. He is an undergraduate ambassador for Service to School, an organization designed to help veterans earn admission into college. He is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Liesel Kershul

Liesel Kershul is a writer and a lifelong student of philosophy, politics, and human behavior. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.S. in applied psychology from Sacred Heart University. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Tenley Lozano

Tenley Lozano is a former Coast Guard shipboard engineer and deep-sea diver. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Sierra Nevada College and lives in San Diego, where she works as a ship design engineer. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Derek McElroy

Derek McElroy is a former cavalry scout in the U.S. Army. He was deployed in support of Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2004. During his deployment, he developed a love for writing from the exchanges he had with his father back home. Roger McElroy wrote to his son every day he was deployed, sometimes twice a day. Through these exchanges, Derek McElroy found the ability to organize and express his thoughts and emotions. A decorated and respected veteran, he holds a bachelor’s of business administration from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. He currently owns and operates CrossFit HomeBase Central in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He is a 2017 War Horse Fellow.

Brendan O'Byrne

Brendan O’Byrne is an Army veteran who served with the 173rd as an infantry sergeant in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. Since being home, he has worked to understand what it means to serve. O’Byrne uses speeches and writing to convey his war and homecoming story. He is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Jenny Pacanowski

Jenny Pacanowski is a poet, combat veteran, and public speaker. While deployed to Iraq with the Army, Pacanowski was a medic and provided medical support for convoys with the Marines, Air Force, and Army. She also did shifts in the Navy medical hospital. In Germany, she was part of a medical evacuation company. Pacanowski is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Joe Quinn

Joe Quinn is the director of leadership development for Team Red, White & Blue, a veteran service organization that enriches the lives of America’s veterans by connecting them to their community through physical and social activity. Quinn worked in Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency advisor for Gen. David Petraeus and has been an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point since his graduation in 2002. He spent six years in the U.S. Army, where he served two deployments to Iraq. Quinn received a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, Melanie, and their daughter. Quinn is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Nina Semczuk

Nina Semczuk’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, Sinking City, Coal Hill Review, Sledgehammer Lit, and The Line Literary Review. Before moving to Brooklyn, New York, Semczuk served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army for five years. Semczuk is an editor of the Writer’s Foundry Review and an associate teacher for Voices From War, a veterans writing workshop. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Supriya Venkatesan

Supriya Venkatesan served six years on active duty in the U.S. Army with deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and South Korea. She is a freelance writer with bylines in Forbes, Playboy, TIME, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, and elsewhere. She is also currently working on her first book, a pop science examination of moral injury in the lives of veterans and civilian culture. She holds an M.S. in strategic communications from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in media and communications from Maharishi University. She is active in her community and teaches at the local college and gives writing workshops at Trenton Soup Kitchen. Venkatesan is a mother with a passion for cooking, meditation, and yoga. She is a 2017 War Horse fellow.

Jeremy Warneke

Jeremy Warneke is a public servant in the Bronx, New York, where he lives with his family. He enlisted in the Army National Guard prior to 9/11 and served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

In 2016, with the support of the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York Public Library, and Voices From War, Warneke created his own writing workshop, The Craft of War Writing, which provides free, high-level reading and writing instruction based upon the themes of conflict and war. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction Southeast, O-Dark-Thirty, Intersections International, Daily Kos, and elsewhere. He is a 2017 War Horse fellow.