Incoming

In this episode of Incoming, author and Army veteran Kayla Williams talks with us about serving in Iraq as the most forward-deployed woman of the war at her time. She faced breakdowns in communication and morale both in-country, and then upon returning home in her marriage to a fellow soldier recovering from a traumatic brain injury.

About the Show:

Incoming showcases the true stories of America’s military veterans, told in their own...

Musician, comic and Navy veteran Allison Gill invites us into her alchemy of metabolizing trauma through comedy.

About the Show:

Incoming showcases the true stories of America’s military veterans, told in their own words, straight from their own mouths. Produced by So Say We All, a 501c3 literary and performing arts nonprofit, in collaboration with San Diego’s NPR station KPBS.

Website:

https://www.sosayweallonline.com/incoming/

Co...

We have two of the most entertaining, self-made, grunt-ass Marines on today’s show. Their upbringings made them perfect candidates for the United States Marine Corp, the USMC, an acronym Marines will often repurpose when referring to themselves as Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.

Veteran and stand-up comedian Brian Simpson talks about maintaining identity while serving in the armed forces. And veteran Dan Lopez tells the true story a...

We’re spending this hour with our friend, writer, performer, and veteran Navy officer, James Seddon. James is one of the founding members of So Say We All’s Veteran Writers Program, is published in the first Incoming anthology, and has performed his writing all over San Diego. Though he’s been working diligently on his memoir, he came by to share some of his incredible stories about the labels placed upon service members, enemies, ...

“Everything Is A War,” focuses on stories about how serving in a war zone can stick to a person, so deeply that traces of it will magically appear months, years after a service member returns home. And it doesn’t just impact service members, but the friends, lovers, and family of those connected to them. We’ve drafted two voices to tell you stories on that front today.

Musical theatre composer and performer Natalie Lovejoy joins us...

Today’s episode takes its name after a quote by Lewis Carrol, “All That Is Really Worth Doing is Worth the Doing is What We do for Others,” and we chose it because our two contributors, Brian Turner and Mariah Smith of the US Army, have stories and poems that echo that sentiment. Mariah, because her story is about jumping through hurdles to be present for an important moment in the life of someone who was important to her, and Bria...

Navigating the present, alongside past and future.

Today’s show, “Unstuck in Time,” is titled after the opening line in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five, one of our favorite descriptions about Post Traumatic Stress. Vonnegut uses it in reference to his main character, where he writes, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” Upon first reading the book, it’s natural to take it literally — the book is couched in a science-f...

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. – Fredrick Nietzsche.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote reminds me that there are certain individuals who have unique insights about the process of staring into the abyss, as well as climbing back out of it again. We have four terrific veteran writers and artists speaking on the subject who come ...

“I was much further out than you thought, And not waving but drowning.” –Stevie Smith.

Today’s episode is titled “Lost At Sea,” for two reasons: firstly because we’ll be hearing from service members who spent a lot of their time bobbing on the water, Kurt Kalbfliesh of the Navy and Tenley Lozano of the Coast Guard, but also because their stories both touch on what they sacrificed and endured during their service that impacted the re...

“Tell me a Story!” He said. “I’ll tell you a story.”

Invasion can be both psychological and literal. We’re very lucky to be able pair up two contributors who dealt with invasion and actually served together at the same time in Iraq, but from very different places. Our contributors are Francisco Martinezcuello, a mustang officer, and Sammi S., an Iraqi man who was barely a teenager when he became an interpreter for the Marine Corp., ...