Pivotal Battle in Vietnam, Write Your Story

Pivotal Vietnam Battle and Its Modern-Day Echoes Guest: Mark Bowden, National Correspondent for The Atlantic, Senior Writer for Vanity Fair, Author of “Black Hawk Down” and “Hue 1968” It was a turning point in the Vietnam War. On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched a surprise attack on the city of Hue and a number of other sites. America and its South Vietnamese allies were caught flat-footed. It would take two weeks for them to regain control of Hue. Two weeks of intense combat, street by narrow street. The attack happened on Tet – the Vietnamese New Year – symbolic because the North Vietnamese envisioned that “with the new year would dawn a new, independent Vietnam.” So writes Mark Bowden in his new book, “Hue 1968.” It is an exhaustive and gripping account of a pivotal battle – the most wrenching of the war. After Tet, writes Bowden, “the debate was never again about how to win in Vietnam, but how to leave.” Similar themes echo through America’s ongoing fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Other echoes of Hue can be found in the way US media report on wars today; the antagonism between the press and the President; the public fatigue with losing American lives in a far-off conflict.   You Are Boring, But Write It Anyway! Guests: Louise Plummer, Retired Professor of English, BYU; Ann Cannon, Columnist for "The Salt Lake Tribune." Co-Authors of “You Are Boring, But You Are Uniquely Boring: 25 Models for Writing Memoir” As a literary genre, memoir started to become a huge money maker in the 1990s, with a big boost from Frank McCourt’s best-seller Angela’s Ashes winning the Pulitzer Prize. Ann Cannon and Louise Plummer will try to convince us that anyone can write an engaging memoir, no matter how ordinary or dull they feel. They’ve just published a book called, “You Are Boring, But You Are Uniquely Boring: 25 Models for Writing Memoir.” Between them, Ms. Cannon and Prof. Plummer have published dozens of books of poetry, young adult fiction and memoir.