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Matt Gallagher
February 19 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Join us for an engaging evening of literature and conversation with Matt Gallagher, an author, journalist, Iraq War veteran, and Tulsa Artist Fellow. Matt will be reading from his latest novel, Daybreak, which follows the journey of an Iraq War veteran who ventures to Ukraine to contribute to the country’s war efforts. Alongside the reading, Matt will participate in an insightful discussion with Boris Dralyuk, a Ukrainian poet and fellow Tulsa Artist.
This free event will start at 6:00 pm in the McKeon Center for Creativity, located at 9th and Boston in downtown Tulsa.
Daybreak is available for pre-order online at: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/daybreak/1783 or at Magic City Books. It will be for sale at the event and at Magic City Books starting on February 20.
After the reading, there will be a book signing session. This event is part of TCC’s Poetry Reading Series, generously sponsored by the TCC Foundation, and is made possible through collaboration with our event partners, Magic City Books, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
About Daybreak
A disillusioned American veteran volunteers for the war in Ukraine to reconnect with a woman from his past in this timely and powerful novel from a “vital” (The Washington Post) voice in contemporary literature.
Thirty-three-year-old Luke “Pax” Paxton has been out of the US military for almost a decade, adrift in an America he no longer understands, haunted by a mistake made in an unforgiving moment of combat. When an old army friend suggests they travel to Ukraine to help fight against the Russian invasion, he agrees, and together they cross an ocean to Lviv, the City of Lions. But Pax isn’t merely going out of the goodness of his heart. He carries with him the address of a former love, a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana whom he had known as a young soldier and has been unable to forget.
His feverish journey through Lviv takes him down winding and missile-cratered streets as he forms surprising connections with everyone from humanitarian volunteers to displaced Ukrainians and ordinary citizens trying to survive. And when Pax gets the chance to save someone dear to Svitlana, he just might be able to correct the wrongs that have wracked him with guilt for so many years.
Inspired by the author’s time in Ukraine, Daybreak is a deeply moving love story, as well as an exploration of the struggle to find meaning and redemption in the midst of war.
Matt Gallagher is a US Army veteran and the author of four books, including the novels Youngblood and Daybreak. His work has appeared in Esquire, ESPN, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Wired, among other places. A graduate of Wake Forest and Columbia, he is the recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Fellowship, and was selected as the 2022 Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum Writer-in-Residence. He lives with his family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
