With a moving exhibit as the backdrop inside the Gillespie Gallery at the Art & Design Building on George Mason’s Fairfax campus, three George Mason alumni recently reflected on turning their experiences as military veterans into art.
The panel discussion entitled “Another Country: Veteran Artists and Writers in Conversation” kicked off the 2026 International Writers Festival presented by George Mason’s Alan Cheuse International Writers Center in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
“When we began working together with the veterans, I learned from them that the language of the military, its norms and customs, are like a country in and of itself,” Cheuse Center director Leeya Mehta said. “I was also fascinated with the ways veteran artists thought about their own origins, before they entered the military—the places they came from and the languages they spoke as children.”
The conversation took place in the middle of “As You Were,” an exhibit curated by retired Captain Moira McGuire, former director of healing arts at Walter Reed National Medical Center, that features the work of 31 artists encompassing veterans, family members, and caregivers.
“Veterans who submitted for this show very specifically identified that sense of community as being so important,” said McGuire, who is also an adjunct lecturer in George Mason’s arts management program. “It is something I think creativity and expression naturally lead to. People create communities around their photography, their creative writing, their experiences as veterans. It is a beautiful pursuit, and we absolutely want to support it.”
With McGuire moderating the panel, George Mason alumni Steven Luu, BFA Art and Visual Technology ’22, MFA Art and Visual Technology ’26, Kat Reyes Colvert, MFA Creative Writing ’22, and Ben Inks, MFA Creative Writing ’22, discussed their works and their service as veterans post 9/11.
Luu, whose work, along with McGuire’s was featured in the exhibit, is a former combat medic who was first introduced to art through an intensive treatment program at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He has collaborated with the Cheuse Center for four years—conducting workshops, sharing his art, and deepening the Cheuse Center’s understanding of the veteran experience. The audience heard deeply personal work about Luu’s service and artistic practice during the session.
Inks and Colvert, former classmates in the creative writing program, spoke to the therapeutic processes of writing. Inks, who earned a Purple Heart in Afghanistan, composed the short story collection, Soft Targets, which was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023. Colvert served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy. She is currently working on her debut novel, The Ghost of Malabon, a coming-of-age story inspired by true events about a young woman as she searches for answers in the guerrilla resistance after the murder of her grandfather in Japanese occupied Philippines.
“I used writing, which is why I like fiction, as a way to bring aspects of certain people I no longer have back to life,” Colvert said. “I can manipulate worlds and think about things I don’t maybe want to commit to in this version of me sitting here right now.”
The festival encompassed two days and featured writers from as far as India and Spain. In conjunction with the United States’ semiquincentennial celebration, Mehta and the Cheuse Center wanted the festival to focus on seeing America from different perspectives.
“When we attempted to address the subject of Seeing America/Translating America, we did not want to prescribe what it meant to anyone,” Mehta said. “What emerged was an unexpected playfulness and depth and a celebration of the human condition in all its myriad ways. Where American writers were sounding an alarm bell, our Spanish writer in residence Marina Pérezagua talked about how much she missed America when she is in Spain. I was left with a sense of exhilaration at the community of writers and artists whose work centers us to do what Alan Cheuse had hoped we would: read as much as you can, write as much as you can, and love as much as you can.”
