Much of the literature of war was written after the guns were silent. The letters and diaries of the combatants written in the shadow of battle often stayed private.

Now, the writings of soldiers like Bethel Park native Ed Hrivnak are in print in national publications. "I was just a blue-collar firefighter. Now I'm a writer published in the New Yorker," Hrivnak said Monday.

	Cover image from the book "Operation Homecoming." Click photo for larger image. Related article Excerpts from 'Operation Homecoming'

The journals he wrote about his experiences as a member of an Air Force medical unit in the first days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq are included in the 2006 book, "Operation Homecoming" (Random House, $26.95). The magazine included selections from the book last year in an edition devoted to war writing.

Edited by Andrew Carroll, the book contains essays, poems, letters and journals from America's latest war. A dozen selections, including one by Hrivnak, will be performed tomorrow in the American Shorts Reading Series at the New Hazlett Theater, North Side.

The National Endowment for the Arts launched Operation Homecoming three years ago with a $450,000 grant from defense contractor Boeing. The program both collected writings and offered writing workshops to provide soldiers an outlet for their accounts of the Iraq-Afghanistan fighting.

NEA Chairman Dana Gioia added that the agency also hoped to find "important new writers."

Major American writers such as Tobias Wolff, Richard Wilbur, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tom Clancy, Mark Bowden and Jeff Shaara held writing workshops at 25 military bases in the United States and abroad, but Hrivnak missed the deadline to attend.

"I sent my journals in anyway," he said. "Then one day the NEA called me and said they wanted to use them. I was taken by surprise."

Hrivnak joined the Air Force after graduating in 1987 from Bethel Park High School, where he was senior class president. He now lives in Spanaway, Wash.

When the U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003, his unit, the 491st Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, was one of the first transportation crews in the war zone.

"Every day we were in a different country transporting and treating casualties from both wars, Iraq and Afghanistan," Hrivnak said. "I started to keep a journal of my days to capture what was going on there.

"We'd watch CNN or the BBC news reports on the war, but they seemed so sterile to me. They just didn't describe what these young kids were going through," he explained. "My journal ended up being pretty rudimentary stuff and when I got home, I put it away. I forgot about it."

After learning about Operation Homecoming, "I cleaned it up a little bit and sent it in," he said. "I was really lucky to get in the book. There are 86 of us out of about 3,000 submissions."

Both Hrivnak and Carroll said that neither the NEA, Pentagon nor Boeing interfered with the selection of the writings.

"They didn't change my words or content," said Hrivnak.

"At no point in the process did the NEA say, 'Take this out,' " said Carroll, "and I never heard from Boeing. Sure, when I first came to Operation Homecoming, I thought the NEA would be very aware of the politics of this thing."

He added, "The troops have earned the right to say what they wanted to say. Their stuff goes all over the political and emotional spectrum. There's plenty in the book to anger everybody."

The agency selected Carroll because of his successful Legacy Project, an effort he started in 1998 to archive soldiers' correspondence from all of America's wars. He's paid nothing for his participation in the NEA initiative.

"Jon Peede [the agency's staffer] said I got the job because I was the lowest bidder," Carroll joked.

The NEA continues to seek submissions from soldiers, although the workshops have ceased. The NEA Web site, www.operationhomecoming.gov, offers information for entries.

Operation Homecoming begins at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the New Hazlett Theater, North Side. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $7 at the door. 412-622-8866.