Peter M Bourret

A longtime resident of Tucson, Arizona, Peter Bourret is an award-winning author, a retired high school English teacher, and Vietnam War veteran. He is a Life Member of the Vietnam Veterans of America and is a member of Marine Corps League Detachment 1344. Before becoming a teacher, Bourret served in Vietnam during 1967 and 1968 as a Marine 81mm mortarman with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He returned to Vietnam in 1991 and 1999 to help him with his healing process; additionally, he has used writing as another vehicle to help him process his Vietnam War experience.

In 2014, 2015 & 2017, Bourret was awarded 1st Place Medals for various pieces of his writing by the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival; additionally, he also received 2nd and 3rd Place Medals in 2011 & a 2nd Place Medal in 2019. He was a Finalist in the Poetry Category in 2019 & a Finalist in the Fiction Category at the Tucson Festival of Books in 2020. In 2018, Bourret was the guest speaker at the 418th Quartermaster Battalion’s annual dinner, where he addressed the topic of overcoming survivor’s guilt. War: A Memoir, a narrative about his PTSD, interwoven with two dozen of his poems, was published online during the summer of 2014 by The Writers’ Circle, Inc. @ www.riwriterscircle.com . He is the author of Three Joss Sticks In The Rain, a novel, which addresses the topic of how people deal with their war experiences in a variety of ways, and Jello’s Nam: A Memoir, which deals with his war experience and its aftermath; additionally, he co-wrote a screenplay adaptation of Three Joss Sticks In The Rain. He also has published four books of poetry: The Physics of War: Poems of War and Healing, Land of Loud Noises and Vacant Stares, Snowflakes from the Other Side of the Universe and Weaving A Wicked Web. Bourret’s first return trip to Vietnam was chronicled in a documentary called Strands of Barbed Wire, & he is one of the subjects in Vietnam Across America, a documentary produced by his son Jeremy.

Bourret continues to study ways to help others deal with PTSD . To this end, Bourret was a guest Creative Writing teacher at Salpointe Catholic High School, where he taught a unit on a creative approach to writing war poetry. For more than twenty-five years, he has been a guest speaker at local middle schools & high schools on the topic of PTSD & his Vietnam War experiences. He was a guest speaker at the University of Arizona College of Nursing on the topic of dealing effectively with people with PTSD. For five years, he co-taught a class called PTSD Intro and Readiness Group at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care Facility for veterans suffering from PTSD. Under a pseudonym, he was the subject of an article in Psychiatric Times concerning his use of writing as a positive coping mechanism. Bourret also has sponsored two veteran support groups for the past five years. Based on these experiences, he is currently developing a book about how to understand and deal with PTSD.