Phil Klay, a former Marine, has won the National Book Award for fiction for his debut short-story collection Redeployment. The author found inspiration from his experience serving in Iraq. In his acceptance speech, Klay said, “I came back not knowing what to think. What do you do when you’re trying to explain in words, to the father of a fallen Marine, exactly what that Marine meant to you?” He said writing the collection helped him deal with the issues of war. “I can’t think of a more important conversation to be having,” he continued, “War is too strange to be processed alone.”