L. Tammy Duckworth was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. She was confirmed by the Senate on April 22, 2009 and sworn in by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, on April 24, 2009.

As Assistant Secretary, Duckworth represents and advises the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on matters relating to media and public affairs. She directs departmental communications and oversees programs relating to intergovernmental relations, homeless Veterans, consumer affairs, and the Department’s six national rehabilitative special event programs.

Duckworth served as the Director of Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs from 2006-2008. As director, she implemented many first-in-the-nation, cutting-edge programs for Veterans, especially in the areas of health care, mental health, housing and employment. She also initiated a public-private partnership program giving grants to non-profits working on Veterans disability, homelessness, long-term medical care and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

A Major in the Illinois Army National Guard, Duckworth served in Iraq as an Assistant Operations Officer and also flew combat missions as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. During a mission north of Baghdad in 2004, her aircraft was ambushed and a rocket-propelled grenade struck the helicopter she was co-piloting. She continued to attempt to pilot the aircraft until passing out from blood loss. As a result of the attack, Duckworth lost both of her legs and partial use of one arm. She received many decorations for her actions, including the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and the Combat Action Badge.

Since her recovery at Walter Reed, Duckworth has dedicated her life to public service, advocating on behalf of disability rights and Veterans. She testified several times before Congress regarding medical care and employment for Veterans. In 2006, Duckworth ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing by less than two percent of the vote. In 2007, she received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award and was named the 2008 Disabled Veteran of the Year by the Disabled American Veterans. In 2008, she was selected by Candidate Obama to deliver the presidential campaign’s key address on Veterans’ rights at the Democratic National Convention. In 2009, she was named as an American Veterans (AMVETS) Silver Helmet award recipient.

Duckworth served as a manager for Rotary International, supervising employees in Tokyo, New Delhi, Sydney, Seoul and Chicago. She speaks fluent Thai and Indonesian and is a published author on the health risks of environmental radon and lung cancer. Her Ph.D. studies on the International Political Economy of Southeast Asia were interrupted by her deployment to Iraq and injury. She has declined her Army medical retirement to continue her service in the National Guard. In 2008, she completed the Chicago Marathon, fulfilling a promise made at Walter Reed. She has also resumed flying and recently received a Statement of Demonstrated Ability from the FAA certifying her to fly aircraft without the use of assistive devices.

Brian Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. His poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. He has received a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry. He has also been named the 2009-2010 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar.

His poetry collection, Here, Bullet, is a harrowing, powerful first-person account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. In the tradition of poets Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa (Dien Cai Dau) and Bruce Weigl (Song of Napalm), Iraq war veteran Brian Turner has written powerfully affecting poetry based upon his year-long tour in Iraq as an infantry team leader.

A New York Times “Editor’s Choice” Selection, the book has received many awards, including: the Beatrice Hawley Award, Northern California Book Award in Poetry, Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Sheila Margaret Motton Award, PEN Center USA Literary Award in Poetry, and a Charity Randall Citation. MORE

“The day of the first moonwalk, my father’s college literature professor told his class, #8216;Someday they’ll send a poet, and we’ll find out what it’s really like.’ Turner has sent back a dispatch from a place arguably more incomprehensible than the moon—the war in Iraq—and deserves our thanks...”

— The New York Times Book Review of
Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

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• Hear him read from his work

Brian Turner will read from his work at 11am on Sunday, June 28th.

Gülşat Aygen is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Northern Illinois University. She has been a Literature & Medicine facilitator at Rush Hospital in Illinois since 2007. She received her PhD in Linguistics at Harvard (2002). Her research focuses on theoretical study of languages and the relationship between brain and language. She has published two books: Case, Agreement and Clausal Architecture (2004); Kurmanji Kurdish Grammar (2007); and an edited collection of articles, Light Verbs (2002). In addition, she has published numerous professional articles and translated many works of literature. She has received excellence in teaching awards at Harvard University and Reed College, and at Northern Illinois University received an LGBT Ally Award and was nominated for the Outstanding Mentor Award.

Suzanne Brown is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College, where she has taught since 1980. Her courses there have included Humanities, Contemporary American Literature, Women’s Studies, Critical Theory, and Creative Writing. Suzanne’s short stories and critical articles have appeared in such publications as The Southern Review, The Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly, and Modern Fiction Studies. She spent a year in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar and was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire Arts Council and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell and Ragdale artist colonies. She holds a doctorate in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Suzanne attended the first Literature & Medicine workshop in Maine almost eight years ago and has been facilitating discussions in hospitals ever since. This year she is working with five hospitals, including leading a fourth year of discussions at the VA hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, and is the editor for Echoes of War, a new anthology of readings published by the Maine Humanities Council for the Literature & Medicine program. She lives with her husband in Etna, New Hampshire.

Laurie Quinn is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Granite State College, the University System of New Hampshire’s college for working adults. Laurie teaches British Literature, Women’s Literature, writing, and various other courses as a member of the college’s adjunct faculty. A facilitator in the Maine Humanities Council’s Literature & Medicine program for five years and an Institute faculty member in 2006, she also ran the New Hampshire Humanities Council’s version of the program when she served as Senior Program Director there. Laurie’s doctorate is in English literature, and she earned her M.A. and B.A. from Boston College. Her interests include social class issues in literature, feminist literary traditions, modern British literature, and contemporary British and American poetry. She lives in Portsmouth, NH with her husband and their young son.

Greg Waters is a professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey and director of the University Honors Program. He recently returned to the English Department after twenty years in university administration, serving as Deputy Provost, Interim President and Vice President for University Advancement at Montclair. He received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his Ph.D from Rutgers. He has written scholarly papers, articles and reviews on topics ranging from 16th century prose style to modern American poetry, and currently teaches a variety of courses in American literature, rhetoric and drama at Montclair. Currently vice chairman of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, he served as facilitator for a Literature & Medicine program for three years. Father of two grown children, his wife teaches fourth grade in an urban school.

Victoria Bonebakker joined the Maine Humanities Council as Associate Director in 1997 when the Council merged with the Maine Collaborative for Education in the Arts & Humanities, where she had been director for eight years. In previous incarnations she taught elementary school French in Washington D. C. and San Francisco, practiced law in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and taught law at UCLA Law School. Her “outside” interests include her family (husband, two grown children and their spouses, two grandsons and one dog) cooking for friends and family, reading, Chebeague Island, sailing, traveling and friends. Currently she serves on the board of Portland West. Victoria received her A.B. Vassar College (French and Art History) and her J.D. from Hastings College of Law (University of California).

Dan Hamilton is a Physician Assistant in the Home Based Primary Care program at Togus VA Hospital where he provides Primary Care to Veterans in their homes throughout central Maine. He has been the liaison for the Literature & Medicine program at Togus since it’s inception several years ago. He graduated from the Physician Assistant program at SUNY at Stony Brook in New York in 1980. He is currently a preceptor of PA and Nurse Practitioner students in Geriatrics at Togus. Dan spent 1969-1970 in Cu Chi, Vietnam as a member of the US Army. He is a proud father of three women and grandfather of two wonderful grandchildren with another on the way.

Deb Hamilton has worked as a Homecare and Hospice nurse in rural Maine for 15 years. Hospice-certified, she specializes in palliative care and pain management. She has been a participant in the Literature & Medicine program since its inception at Togus VA hospital 8 years ago. Deb is also a Registered Maine Guide and leads trips into the great Maine wilderness. Her other great passion is her family—she is now a grandmother of two with another on the way.

Timothy J. Richardson was appointed Chief of Staff of the VA Medical Center, Togus in September 2000 with the challenge of improving access to primary and specialty medical care services for veterans in Maine. Additionally, he is working to further improve the Palliative and End-of-Life care provided to Maine veterans. Togus operates a medical center offering a broad range of primary and specialized services in Medicine, Surgery, Mental Health, and Geriatrics and Extended Care, and five community-based clinics offering Primary Care services to veterans in areas remote from the medical center. Dr. Richardson is a native of Bethany, Connecticut. He completed his pre-medical studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he received a BA degree in Biology and English. He received his M.D. degree from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia where he was elected a member of the AOA Medical Honor Society. Prior to his VA appointment, he was in private practice in Internal Medicine in Waterville, Maine and served as Assistant Director of the Dialysis Unit at Mid-Maine Medical Center. Dr. Richardson joined the VA in 1986 as a staff physician in Ambulatory Care at Togus and was the Chief of Geriatrics and Extended Care from 1991 until he assumed the Chief of Staff position. He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine with additional certification in Geriatric Medicine. He has been an active participant and advocate for the Literature & Medicine group at Togus VAMC, and is an advisor for the effort to involve Literature & Medicine program in VA hospitals across the country.

Lizz Sinclair has been a Program Officer for the Maine Humanities Council for the past ten years, directing the Let’s Talk About It program for libraries and organizing Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care®. With Literature & Medicine she works closely with healthcare professionals, scholars and colleagues at other humanities councils in her role as a trainer and mentor for the program in Maine and nationally. Lizz is the editor of Synapse, Literature & Medicine’s e-zine and can be found painting when not at the Council.

Jean Wortman is a program officer at the Maryland Humanities Council where she coordinates the Maryland Center for the Book—including Literature & Medicine in Maryland—and oversees the Museum on Main Street program. Prior to joining the Council in 2005, she worked for many years developing and leading public education programs for museums and other non-profit organizations. She has an MA from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY Oneonta and a BA in American Civilization from Lafayette College.