Anthony Swofford will be here to read from his new memoir, Hotels, Hospitals and Jails. A New York Times bestseller, Swofford’s first book, Jarhead, recounted his service as a marine sniper in the Gulf War. Following the success of Jarhead, Swofford assumed he had exorcised his military demons, but in these searing, courageous pages, he struggles to make sense of what his military service meant, and to decide what his life can and should become.

Anthony Swofford served in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. After the war, he was educated at American River College; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught at the University of Iowa and Lewis and Clark College. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Men’s Journal, The Iowa Review, and other publications. Jarhead was the basis for the movie of the same name.