Fiction Editors

Ben Yeager

Ben is a writer, theoretically, a college consultant, an ocean lifeguard, surfer and kayak fisherman, a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Montana, and an editor at Wrath-Bearing Tree. His unpublished novels are unpublished.

Adrian Bonenberger

Adrian Bonenberger is a writer. He published his war memoirs, Afghan Post, through The Head and The Hand Press.

Matt Jones

Matt Jones is a poet, novelist, storyteller and veteran who has published in Arc, F(r)iction, and many other places. Today, Matt writes and teaches in Paris: leadership at the École militaire and creative writing at SciencesPo. He edits prose at The Wrath Bearing Tree, co-hosts the by-donation WriteTime workshop, and organizes fitness enthusiasts who use trees as barbells: the Log Club. You can join his mailing list at www.matthewjamesjones.com.

Poetry Editors

Amalie Flynn

Amalie Flynn is a poet and the author of FLESH (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH (Middle West Press, 2021), WIFE AND WAR: THE MEMOIR (2013) and a collection of poetry blogs: SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH, WIFE AND WAR, THE SUSTAINABILITY OF US, BORDER OF HEARTBREAK, and NOT YOURS TO DESTROY. Flynn’s writing has appeared in THE THINGS WE CARRY STILL, AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, BEYOND THEIR LIMITS OF LONGING, THE NEW YORK TIMES, TIME, and THE HUFFINGTON POST and has received mention from THE NEW YORK TIMES and CNN. Flynn has a BA in English/Studio Arts, an MFA in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Humanities. Flynn lives in Rhode Island with her husband and their two children.

Nonfiction Editors

Michael Carson

Michael Carson served in the U.S. Army Infantry from 2005 to 2009. He studied history and fiction in New England and now lives on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Lauren Kay Johnson

Lauren Kay Johnson is a former military public affairs officer and Afghanistan veteran. Her memoir, The Fine Art of Camouflage, chronicles her coming-of-age against the backdrop of war—beginning with her mother's Army career and deployment in support of Operation Desert Storm when Lauren was seven years old, and later with her own service. Lauren's essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Glamour, Yale Medicine Magazine, CONSEQUENCE magazine, Drunken Boat, Pleiades, and several anthologies. Her writing and interviews have been used in the creation of dance and theater productions, and she has lectured at schools, conferences, and veteran centers across the country, including the Association of Writers and Writing Programs national conference, the Boston Book Festival, and the University of Iowa. She is a writing consultant with GrubStreet, an editor at the Wrath-Bearing Tree, and a former editor-in-chief of Redivider. Lauren lives with her husband and twin daughters outside Seattle. By day, she is a Program Director at IGNITE Worldwide, a non-profit that aims to combat the gender imbalance in STEM fields. By night, she writes (with the help of her fat tabby cat) and eats copious amounts of ice cream.

Board of Directors

Jennifer Orth-Veillon

Jennifer A. Orth-Veillon, who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Emory University, curates the WWrite blog from the perspective of a writer, scholar, teacher, and French-English translator specializing in the literature of war and the experience of the American veteran. She has led writing workshops for veterans on university campuses and has taught over twenty courses on different modes and mediums for war veteran memoirs. For two summers she served as a teaching assistant to Dr. Mark Facknitz's James Madison University's summer abroad program on the Great War and modern memory, which took place at various WWI memorial sites in France, Belgium, and England. In her writing and research, she seeks to understand the complexity of war through its shifting place in cultural memory and history.

Matthew J. Hefti

Matthew J. Hefti is the author of A Hard and Heavy Thing (Gallery / Simon & Schuster 2016), which was named to Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of 2016 and Military Times Top Ten Novels of the Year. A Hard and Heavy Thing was also awarded the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Achievement Recognition, and it was selected by the Women's National Book Association as a Great Group Read for National Book Club Month in 2016. Matthew's work has appeared in print in anthologies such as The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War (Pegasus Books 2017), Retire the Colors (Hudson Whitman 2016), MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014) and others. His literary criticism and cultural and personal essays have appeared at Literary Hub and Electric Literature, among many others. Matthew is a fiction and poetry editor for the Wrath-Bearing Tree. He spent 12 years as an explosive ordnance disposal technician, deploying twice to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan. While enlisted, he earned a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. After he left the military, he got his JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

Ben LeRoy

Ben LeRoy is the founder and publisher of the critically acclaimed publishing companies Bleak House Books (2000-2009) and Tyrus Books (2009-2017). Ben works as a freelance editor, helping authors identify the story they intend to tell and how to best tell it. In 2014, after the suicide death of a friend, Ben did volunteer work in all 50 states as part of the Be Local Everywhere project. In addition to his role on the board of Wrath-Bearing Tree, Ben serves on the board of Common Wealth Development. He lives in Madison, WI.