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David Morris, MFA '09, "What We Talk About When We Are Talking About PTSD"

David Morris '09, author of The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Just as polio stalked the 1950s, and AIDS overshadowed the 1980s and ‘90s, post-traumatic stress disorder haunts us in the early years of the twenty-first century.  Over a decade into America’s “global war on terror,” PTSD afflicts as many as 30 percent of the conflict’s veterans.  But the disorder’s reach extends far beyond the armed forces.  In total, some twenty-seven million Americans are believed to be PTSD survivors.  Yet to many of us, the disorder remains shrouded in mystery, secrecy, and shame.

Drawing on his own battles with post-traumatic stress, David J. Morris — a war correspondent and former Marine — has written a humane, unforgettable book that will sit beside The Noonday Demon and The Emperor of All Maladies as the essential account of an illness.  Through interviews with people living with PTSD; forays into the rich scientific, literary, and cultural history of the condition; and memoir, Morris crafts a moving work that will speak not only to those with PTSD and their loved ones, but to all of us struggling to make sense of an anxious and uncertain time.
About Alumnus and Author David Morris:

David Morris is a former Marine infantry officer. He worked in Iraq from 2004 to 2007 as a reporter for Salon and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His story “The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground” was originally published in VQR and was included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.

In 2008 Morris was awarded a creative nonfiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as residencies at The MacDowell Colony and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program, in 2009 he won the Staige D. Blackford Award for nonfiction writing from the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Contact: Jayne E. Lewis, jelewis@uci.edu

Sponsored by Illuminations, the Chancellor's Arts and Culture Initiative, the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on War, and Medical Humanities.