Another Day, Another Fake Writer

“What do you pack/To take to a war?” Dana Shuster wrote in Battle Dressing, a collection of poems about her experiences as a Vietnam War combat nurse that won her the 1999 Houston Writers League Poetry Chapbook contest. Yet it appears that’s a question Shuster never actually had to answer for herself. Laura Palmer, who wrote about Shuster nearly twenty years ago in a book about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial called Shrapnel in the Heart, was recently asked if she knew for a fact that Shuster had served in Vietnam. Shocked by the question, “[I] asked [Shuster] if she could corroborate her service for me in specific ways,” Palmer reports in an email circulated to colleagues. “She could not. I learned that she was never in the military and never a nurse.” Palmer adds that since the revelation, Shuster has been hospitalized for psychiatric care and remains in therapy. “It is with profound sadness that I convey this information,” Palmer admits, “but it is important that the truth be known.”

This week we’re bringing you a bunch of great online courses to help you launch a new career, hone your passion, or discover your hidden talent. Courses including Writing the TV Spec Script, Facebook Marketing, Intro to Digital Project Management, and Boot Camp for Journalists. See all online courses.