Connelly Library

Wayne Karlin (June 13, 1945-) is an American author, editor, and teacher. His books include A Wolf by the Ears; Wandering Souls; Marble Mountain; War Movies: Journeys to Vietnam; The Wished-For Country; Prisoners; Rumors and Stones; Crossover; Lost Armies; The Extras; and Us. Karlin has received several awards, including the Maryland Individual Artist Award in Fiction, the Paterson Prize in Fiction, the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in Arts Award, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.

Karlin attended White Plains High School, in New York, and then served as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1963 to 1967. He received military decorations including: the Vietnam Service Medal, the Air Medal, a Presidential Unit Citation, and the Combat Air Crew Badge with three stars. After serving in the military, Karlin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities in 1970 from the American College in Jerusalem and his Master's degree in Creative Writing from Goddard College in 1976. He then went on to teach at the College of Southern Maryland for over thirty years. During his tenure, he served as professor of Languages and Literature and Coordinator of the Leonardtown Campus Languages and Literature Division. Karlin received the Faculty Excellence Award for 2013, and in his honor, the college's faculty senate created the Wayne Karlin Award for Creative Writing for talented student writers.

In addition to lecture and presentation appearances at many colleges and universities, Karlin taught fiction workshops at the University of Massachusetts and St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and travel courses on comparative literature and film of the Vietnam War for New York University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and George Mason University. In addition to teaching, Karlin served as the American editor of a Curbstone Press Voices from Vietnam series, that includes books such as The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers (1995), which he co-edited with Lê Minh Khuê and Truong Lu; The Stars, The Earth, The River: Short Fiction by Lê Minh Khuê (1997); Behind the Red Mist: Fiction by Hồ Anh Thái (1998); Against the Flood, a novel by Ma Văn Kháng (2000); Past Continuous, a novel by Nguyễn Khải (2001); The Cemetery of Chua Village and Other Stories by Đoàn Lê; (2005), Love After War: Contemporary Fiction from Viet Nam, co-edited with Hồ Anh Thái (2003), An Insignificant Family, by Dạ Ngân (2009), and Apocalypse Bell, by Hồ Anh Thái (2012). Karlin also adapted and edited In Whose Eyes: The Memoir of a Vietnamese Filmmaker in War and Peace.

Karlin was a script writer and technical consultant for the award-winning film, Song of the Stork, a Vietnamese–Singaporean co-production. In 2006 and 2009, Karlin was a consulting producer and writer for Shared Weight, a series of hour-long radio programs involving interviews with American and Vietnamese writers, film makers and artists in the U.S. and in Vietnam. He also produced and wrote for the Journeys of Reconciliation series, produced by the National Public Radio's Center for Emerging Media.  

The Department of Special Collections preserves the literary archive of Karlin's writings about the Vietnam War. This literary archive is part of the larger Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War collection. 

Please use the below link to explore the finding aid for the Wayne Karlin Papers. 

The Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection is the largest collection of literary and creative works on the Vietnam War in the world; comprising over 20,000 books of fiction and poetry together with more than 1,000 non-print items. Housed in the Department of Special Collections in the Connelly Library, the Vietnam War Collection serves as a growing repository of works concerned with the experience of the Vietnam War. In addition to the extensive holdings of published literature and feature films, the Collection also houses a number of archival collections, literary manuscripts, and original works of art.   

Pictured above: "Burn." The "Nam vol. 1, no. 75 (Dec. 1992). Marvel Comics Group : Cover.