By Todd DePastino One of the most unforgettable moments of VBC StoryFest 2026 is coming to Morgantown, West Virginia. We hope you'll join us there! When we planned StoryFest, we chose to close the festival with Cody LeRoy Wilson's one-man play, Did My Grandfather Kill My Grandfather? It was a little risky because we'd
By Daria Sommers We're grateful to Aspects of History for allowing this re-post of Daria's article about the history behind her novel. The piece first appeared on the Aspects of History website.I’m frequently asked how much of my novel Sawadika American Girl is drawn from real life. A work of historical fiction, it is
By Todd DePastino Somewhere out there are 35 Marines who enlisted together on a summer evening at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, almost sixty years ago. Some of them may be gone, but their sons, daughters, grandchildren, neighbors, or old friends would know what became of them. Either way, author and Marine
By Todd DePastino One of the pleasures of running the Veterans Breakfast Club is discovering other people like us who have spent years building communities around veterans and their stories. Earlier this year, VBC friend and Vietnam Donut Dolly Ginny Close reached out to tell us about Vietnam veteran Keith Goudy and the remarkable
By Todd DePastino The Veterans Breakfast Club mourns the passing of Diane Carlson Evans, Army nurse, Vietnam veteran, and tireless advocate for women veterans. Diane passed away on May 20, 2026, in Helena, Montana, after a long battle with cancer at the age of 79. It's because of Diane Carlson Evans that we have
By Todd DePastino I've known for three years that VBC Magazine's Managing Editor Daria Sommers was a talented storyteller, gifted writer, and deeply insightful about the human experience of war. But I had no idea she was about to surprise the world with a literary novel that would catch fire with readers around the
