California State University, Fresno alumnus Brian Turner, whose debut book of poems, “Here Bullet,” has been critically acclaimed, has been named winner of the Northern California Book Award.
It was the fourth award for the book, which previously won the 2006 Maine Literacy Award in Poetry, the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection.
The 25th annual Northern California Book Award was sponsored by Northern California Book Reviewers, Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, Poetry Flash, the Center for the Art of Translation and the San Francisco Public Library.
Judging is done in five categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s literature and translation. All of the nominated books were saluted at a ceremony on April 5, when the winners in each category were named.
“Here, Bullet” is Turner’s first-person account of the Iraq war. The poems reflect Turner’s experiences as a soldier with compassion, sensitivity and eloquence, while deploring the violence and acknowledging the grief and terror of war. One poem, “Eulogy,” was written to memorialize a soldier in his platoon who took his own life.
Turner, a creative writing graduate of Fresno State, is a part-time English instructor at Fresno City College and a construction worker. He earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of Oregon and lived in South Korea for a year before serving for seven years in the U.S. Army.
As an infantry team leader in the Iraq, he worked with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division.
Turner’s poetry has been published in “Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review” and other journals, and in the “Voices in Wartime Anthology,” published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name.
For more information about Turner, please visit the following Web site: http://www.aliceiamesbooks.org/here bullet.html.
