I have been avidly subscribing to Guardian Weekly from Hawaii for a couple of decades, but I hadn’t registered how deeply you have shaped not only my teaching on war literature, but also my creative life.
I was shocked to realise how many articles have inspired stories for my collection Headless. In Magic Carpet over the Euphrates, the tech-savvy “ghost” of an Iraqi suicide bomber is recruited by an American drone operator and discovers a headless baby; this turning point was inspired by your full-page article on birth defects after the American siege of Fallujah. The story Shorn, in the voice of a nursing home resident, comes out of a Guardian book review on second world war countries shaving the heads of their own women for supposed “disloyalty”. How I Met the Real Vincent, about a young gay man named Vinh who cruises New York bandaged as an ear-less Vincent Van Gogh, was sparked by your book review that speculated if Van Gogh’s death by shotgun was really suicide. Even a photo of camels in Dubai set off a whole book, a rollicking, “creative nonfiction” volume on bones and camels called The Impossibly Thin Legs of My Racing Camels.
Your well-researched details are so provocatively presented that readers (whether writers or not) can imagine how real people might react.
Thank you, Guardian Weekly!
If you would like to appear in this space, send a brief note to guardian.weekly@theguardian.com
Guardian Weekly readers leave their mark on the world. Click here to view our interactive community map.
