Alex Vernon teaches post-1900 American literature, some film, and writing. He is the author of:
- Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O'Brien (2025), the first literary biography of the most prominent U.S. writer of the war in Vietnam, and one of the best writers of his generation;
- two memoirs,
most succinctly bred
(2006) and
The Eyes of Orion: Five Tank Lieutenants in the Persian Gulf War
(1999; Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award);
- three books of literary criticism/history,
Soldiers Once and Still: Ernest Hemingway, James Salter, and Tim O'Brien
(2004);
Hemingway's Second War: Bearing Witness to the Spanish Civil War
(2011); and
Reading Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls
; Glossary and Commentary
(spring 2024);
- the cultural study
On Tarzan
(2008);
- and four edited collections,
Arms and the Self: War, the Military, and Autobiographical Writing
(2005);
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Tim O'Brien
(2010);
Critical Insights: War
(2012); and
Teaching Hemingway and War
(2016).
He received a 2020-2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for
Peace is a Shy Thing. He's currently working on two international collaborations:
The Letters of Ernest Hemingway volumes 7 and 8, and
The Spanish Earth by Ernest Hemingway and Joris Ivens: The Definitive Photobook Edition.
From 2017-2019, he led a local program for veterans as well as the general public, funded by the NEH's "Dialogue on the Experience of War" program. He wrote the memorial poem at the Young-Wise Memorial Stadium & Plaza on campus and consulted on the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick film
Hemingway
(Florentine/PBS, 2021).