The stories can be powerful.
A mother absentmindedly frets about finding just a single sock in the load of her son's laundry she has just done. Where is the mate? Then she is hit by the stunning and grief-stained remembrance that her son has lost a leg to war.
One sock is all he needs now.
Drawing out the wartime stories of American troops and their families is the mission of Operation Homecoming, a program that will be part of next weekend's Newburyport Literary Festival.
Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the 5-year-old Operation Homecoming initiative is coming to the festival for the first time on Saturday, April 25, at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport's Market Square.
"What we want to communicate is that the wartime writing of military families constitutes essential stories," said Jon Parrish Peede, who directs the program at the NEA.
"Our troops don't just have stories to tell, they are authors, they have produced literature. As with Hemingway as a civilian in World War I or Norman Mailer in World War II ... they are part of a continuum."
The Operation Homecoming workshop will feature a video called "Muse of Fire," in which professional writers and servicemen and women tell their stories, read from their work and talk about the program.
On the video, former NEA Chairman Dana Gioia explains the writing coming out of Operation Homecoming workshops on military bases and VA hospitals serves three purposes.
Telling their stories is an exercise in healing, in catharsis for the troops, he said. It is also history. And it is literature, Gioia said.
"We make their stories more than just a crawler across the bottom of a cable TV news screen," Peede said.
The seed for Operation Homecoming was planted in 2003 by poet Marilyn Nelson, who attended a talk by Gioia. Nelson, the daughter of one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, had taught poetry at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
In a conversation with Gioia after his speech, Nelson told him that some of her former poetry students were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and she would be interested in learning about war from their viewpoint.
Intrigued by Nelson's idea, Gioia set about making it happen at NEA. Operation Homecoming was launched in 2004.
Over time, 34 writers have held 59 workshops with service personnel and their families. The program has generated more than 1,200 individual submissions totaling 12,000 pages.
In 2006, the NEA compiled 100 of the submissions into an anthology, "Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and their Families."
In addition to Peede, the Newburyport presentation will feature readings by Nelson and author Richard Bausch, both of whom have conducted writers' workshops with service personnel and families.
Peede said Operation Homecoming presentations usually end with a conversation between panelists and audience members. The talks are often lively, and people are sometimes reluctant to leave, he said.
"I was at one place where it went on for five hours," he said. "It generated a lot of interest."
Although the program originated with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, many of the writers in uniform are expressing thoughts and emotions voiced by generations of military personnel, Peede said.
"We hope it spotlights not just our current veterans, but all our veterans," he said.
IF YOU GO
What: Operation Homecoming workshop with Jon Parrish Peede of the National Endowment for the Arts, poet Marilyn Nelson and author Richard Bausch.
When: Saturday, April 25, 1 p.m.
Where: Firehouse Center for the Arts, Market Square, Newburyport
How: Free admission. Visit www.OperationHomecoming.gov for more.
The event is part of the Newburyport Literary Festival, which takes place Friday, April 24, through Sunday, April 26. Visit www.newburyportliteraryfestival.org for a complete schedule.
