One night only, book launch & talk

Monday September 11th, 2017, 7:00 PM

Chris Chivers, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter talks to co-authors Finbarr & Thomas

​

Shooting Ghosts is the story of the friendship between an embedded photographer in Afghanistan and a Marine who was wounded in an ambush explosion in 2010.

​

This memoir is a courageous breaking of the code of silence to seek mental health for veterans and the war-scarred. It alternates between the two friends' points of view: O’Reilly, a photojournalist, has spent more than a decade in the most dangerous hot spots on the planet, from Africa to Helmand Province; and Brennan, a Marine squad leader on deployment in Afghanistan, met O'Reilly when he was struck during a horrific Taliban attack in 2010.

 

After his many deployments and injuries, Brennan suffered from serious concussions. O’Reilly was in denial about his emotional instability. Both men ultimately sought professional help, though for Brennan, it was particularly arduous and painful; even asking for help as a Marine branded him as a “pussy” and lowered his stature with his squad.

​

Click here for more info about Shooting Ghosts.

 

​

FINBARR O’REILLY was a 2016 writer in residence at the MacDowell Colony and at the Carey Institute for Global Good. He was also a 2015 Yale World Fellow. Before turning to writing, Finbarr was a Reuters senior photographer covering lsrael and the Palestinian Territories, and the 2014 Gaza war. He was a 2013 Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a 2014 Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University’s DART center for Journalism and Trauma. He covered Africa  as a Reuters correspondent and staff photographer 10 years. He won the World Press Photo of the Year in 2006 for his image of a mother and child at an emergency feeding center in Niger.

 

THOMAS JAMES BRENNAN is a retired Marine Corps sergeant who served in Iraq during the Second Battle of Fallujah, and as a squad leader in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. In 2012, he earned a Masters from Columbia. In 2016, he founded The War Horse, a nonprofit investigative newsroom. In March 2017 he broke the nude photo sharing scandal in the military, forcing Pentagon and Congressional investigations that have changed legislation about sexual exploitation across the Department of Defense. He is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.