James B. WellsAt my MFA’s (EKU Bluegrass Writers Studio) Alumni open mic night, I read a piece from Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew (to be released Father’s Day 2025) that illustrates the nonfiction literary craft technique I used throughout my investigative memoir. That technique, used in combination with triangulated […]
Time to celebrate again. I just achieved another significant milestone by meeting the deadline to submit all the blurbs for my investigative memoir to my publisher, Milspeak Books. I sent them yesterday, July 1, which is also the 46th wedding anniversary of my wife Brenda and me. I am thankful to the influential figures who […]
In my investigative memoir Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew (to be released Father’s Day 2025 by Milspeak Books), I write: “It’s remarkable how something as trivial as a letter, a ring, and some alcohol can allow a father and son to bridge the gap between 1965 […]
This Father’s Day I’m thinking of the greatest way I can honor my father, a man I barely knew when he was killed in Vietnam in 1965. My investigative memoir, Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew, will be released on Father’s Day 2025, 365 days from now […]
At yesterday evening’s open mic at the Kenwick Table, I read a piece that ended with a quote from filmmaker, poet, and artist Jonas Mekas: “In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.”
I’m excited to learn that an essay I wrote about discovering the man responsible for the lives of everyone on my father’s side of the family for the last 100 years will soon be published by a prestigious journal. Southeast Missouri State University Press Dear James Wells, We are pleased to tell you that we’d […]
Some of the most remarkable and valid data contradicting what the US government told us and the media about the circumstances of my father’s death came from former Air America personnel & the Air America archives. The last few days, I was at another Air America reunion in Dayton, Ohio, not to collect more data […]
This Memorial Day weekend I find myself thinking again of my father’s death in Vietnam. At one time, I was upset that my father, who was killed very early in the Vietnam War (September 27, 1965), doesn’t have his name on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall. If his name were there, it would be on […]
There were so many literary events happening in and near Lexington yesterday afternoon. I was fortunate enough to be scheduled to read again at the Luigart Café, a terrific venue for music, poetry, and prose. I read prose poetry and an essay piece inspired by my father’s letters and archival and field research. I’m thinking […]
Interestingly, the last two novels I read were fictional stories about how the dead can still speak to us. This Mother’s Day, I think about how the letters from my father and a note from my mother, discovered after their deaths, served as vital answers to questions not yet asked by anyone, which, after many […]
James B. Wells