LitWar Podcast

LW40: Stan Lake

Stan Lake, a writer, photographer, and filmmaker from Bethania, North Carolina, joins us to talk about his debut poetry collection, A Toad In A Glass Jar. His work appears in The War Horse, Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, and Lethal Minds Journal; he also writes a weekly Substack. See more at www.stanlakecreates.com.We trace a childhood of creeks and BB guns to a 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom—and the dissonant return from convoys to college classrooms. Stan reflects on faith and doubt, ministry and punk rock’s DIY ethos, and the pressure to turn authentic experience into “content.”He walks us through shaping a “poetic memoir” around the toad’s life cycle and the rigorous editing that sharpened it at Dead Reckoning Collective. His advice to new writers: stop aspiring, start doing.

LW39: Kyle Seibel

In this episode, we sit down with Kyle Seibel. He is a Navy veteran, copywriter, and author of the kinetic story collection Hey You Assholes (Clash Books).Kyle shares the unlikely nudge that set him on a writing path. We dig into how military garrison life, corporate bureaucracy, and blue-collar jobs inform his fiction; why short stories feel truer to the episodic way we remember our lives; and how humor and heartbreak can toggle line by line. We also get into performing stories on stage, the discipline of finishing “novel-shaped objects,” and why war writing matters: to resist being reduced to a single tidy paragraph.Bio:
Kyle Seibel served seven years in the U.S. Navy with tours that included a helicopter squadron, a Reserve Seabee battalion, Bahrain, and the final deployments of the USS Enterprise. He moved into advertising as a copywriter and began publishing short fiction. His debut collection, Hey You Assholes, is out from Clash Books. He reads widely, writes daily when he can (and in sprints when the work demands it), and believes the short story is not a waystation to the novel but a destination all its own.

LW38: Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor (author of Real Life, Filthy Animals, and the acclaimed new novel Minor Black Figures) joins host Michael Jerome Plunkett on the LitWar Podcast by Lethal Minds Journal.In this conversation, Brandon reflects on the creative pivot that led him to abandon years of work and begin anew in a Paris hotel room with the novel he truly wanted to write. We talk about Wyeth, the young painter at the heart of Minor Black Figures, and how the book became both a meditation on art and politics in contemporary America and an exploration of individuality, cynicism, and belief.From the quiet intimacy of art restoration to the noise of online discourse, Brandon speaks candidly about millennial disillusionment, the commodification of the self, and the role of fiction in reclaiming life from abstraction. It’s a deeply thoughtful, funny, and searching conversation with one of today’s sharpest literary minds.

LW37: Alex Vernon

In this episode, we sit down with Alex Vernon. Vernon is a veteran, writer, and distinguished professor whose work examines how war shapes the human spirit and the stories we tell about it.
Alex reflects on his journey from the battlefields of the Gulf War to the classroom, and from memoirist to biographer of one of America’s most influential war writers, Tim O’Brien. We discuss the years-long process behind his new book Peace is a Shy Thing, how friendship and trust informed his portrayal of O’Brien, and why storytelling remains one of the few ways to confront moral injury and memory.
Join us as we trace the line between history and myth, duty and compassion, and consider what it means to write honestly about war and the people it leaves behind.Alex Vernon graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point—the only literature major in his class of over a thousand—and served in combat as a tank platoon leader during the Persian Gulf War. He holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and is the recipient of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He currently serves as the M.E. & Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas.
 

LW36: Candace Rondeaux

In this episode, we sit down with Candace Rondeaux, distinguished journalist and international affairs specialist, whose reporting has illuminated critical global conflicts and geopolitical developments.
 
Join us as Candace shares her remarkable journey from a Chicago classroom experimenting with Russian language studies to a career reporting from some of the world's most challenging regions. We explore themes of identity, curiosity, and the transformative power of education, as well as how personal experiences inform our understanding of complex international narratives.

LW35: Tom Mutch

Journalist and war correspondent Tom Mutch joins the LitWar Podcast. From the halls of British Parliament to the front lines of Ukraine, Mutch has reported where history is being made. His new book, Dogs of Mariupol, chronicles the early days of Russia’s invasion and the extraordinary civilians—lawyers, professors, bodyguards, neighbors—who risked everything to defend their country.
This episode dives into the heroism and tragedy witnessed up close: a young couple who left their law firm to fight in Donbas, a philosophy professor turned sniper, and the ethical tightrope journalists walk between storytelling and voyeurism. We explore how myths of war form in real time, how ordinary lives become extraordinary, and the weight of recording history as it unfolds.

LW34: Michael Jerome Plunkett

A LitWar Podcast first! Co-Founder and Executive Director Michael Jerome Plunkett sits down to discuss his debut novel Zone Rouge with co-host Emily Kinard. He reveals his decade-long obsession with Verdun, a French city where they are still dealing with the consequences of the First World War. They discuss everything from the many ways of interpreting Sisyphus and his boulder to the value of fiction writing in today's world. Zone Rouge is available today!

LW33: Jeff Shaara

In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Shaara, bestselling historical novelist and author of Gods and Generals, The Last Full Measure, and The Eagle’s Claw. Shaara continues the literary legacy of his father, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Shaara, whose novel The Killer Angels remains a defining work on the Battle of Gettysburg.
Join us as we discuss Jeff’s transformative childhood experience visiting Gettysburg, the intricate process of writing historical fiction, and the emotional responsibility of continuing his father’s work. Together, we explore how the power of narrative shapes our collective memory and how individual stories illuminate the human dimensions of history.

LW32: Julian Zabalbeascoa

In this episode, we talk with Julian Zabalbeascoa about his debut novel, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, a haunting exploration of memory, silence, and the lingering wounds of the Spanish Civil War. Julian reflects on how landscapes, both familiar and foreign, shape his characters and his storytelling. He shares the real-life events and family history that inspired the book, including stories passed down about the Basque region and the war’s intergenerational shadows. 
 
We discuss the novel’s moral complexities, its shifting points of view, and the challenge of portraying the quiet violences that persist long after a conflict ends. We also get a behind-the-scenes look at working with independent publisher Two Dollar Radio, from the editorial process to the deep collaboration that shaped the book’s final form. Throughout, he speaks candidly about the responsibility of writing historical fiction and the delicate balance between truth, invention, and empathy.

LW31: Khadijah Queen

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Khadijah Queen, esteemed poet and author known for her powerful exploration of identity, vulnerability, and strength through poetic form and narrative innovation.
 
Join us as Khadijah shares what led to the creation of her new memoir Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea which explores her time as a sailor in the US Navy as well as other women who have been erased from the common narrative of life at sea. It is a discussion that asks us to consider not only how a person can serve while retaining their autonomy but also whether institutions serve individuals and if the answer is no, then what are they designed to serve?