Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, VA. In 2004 and 2005 he served with the U.S. Army in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq. He studied English at Virginia Commonwealth University after his honorable discharge and received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012. In the fall of that year, Powers’ first novel, The Yellow Birds, was published, received wide acclaim, and went on to be a finalist for the National Book Award. It is the story of the bond between two young privates during the battle for thecity of Al Tafar in Iraq. In April of this year, his first book of poems, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, appeared.
