Author Bio:
Gary Guinn lives in the southern Ozark Mountains with his wife, Mary Ann, and their Corgi mix, Peanut. He writes both literary and mystery/thriller fiction, short fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He published his first novel, A Late Flooding Thaw, with Moon Lake Publishing in 2005. His poetry and fiction appear in a variety of magazines, and his short fiction appears in several anthologies, the latest being Yonder Mountain, from the University of Arkansas Press. The mystery/thriller novel Sacrificial Lam, released by The Wild Rose Press in 2017, is set on a small Southern college campus. The non-fiction book Midwatch in Verse: New Year’s Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941-1946, co-authored with David E. Johnson, was released in 2023 by McFarland Books. His latest book, The Watch Stands as Written: Voices from the Midwatch, co-authored with David Johnson and Kenneth Keith, was published in 2026 by WildBlue Press. He enjoys reading, writing, traveling, walking the dog with wife Mary Ann.
News Release:
The Watch Stands as Written: Voices from the Midwatch
A curious and little-known Navy tradition—the writing of the first deck log of the new year on Navy ships in verse—resulted in the standard, jargon filled, sometimes indecipherable ship log being written as a poem. The origin of the tradition is unknown, but examples go back at least a century. During the 1950s the tradition flourished, and the poems served as vehicles to express a wide variety of emotions on the part of the young officers who wrote them, revealing their humanity and their “American spirit.” While the world around them began to splinter, young sailors wrote poems not just about international issues but also about the issues that young men face everywhere. As Bob Dyan proclaimed in his popular song in 1964, “The Times They [Were] a Changing.”
Voices from the Midwatch came from over 10,000 deck log poems taken from over 16,000 Navy ship logs and reveals the zeitgeist of the nation and the mindset of individual sailors who wrote the poems—their aspirations, their fears, their engagement with the critical events of the era. The poems included in this book span the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Cold War with its threat of nuclear annihilation, the space race, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Through the Cold War years, the dark cloud of the threat of nuclear war hung over the country. The mushroom cloud, nuclear bomb shelters, and the phrase “duck and cover” became part of the American lexicon. Voices from the Midwatch focuses not on the poetry itself but on what the poems reveal about the young Naval officers and the country at large.
The Watch Stands as Written is Guinn’s fourth book. His previous works include two novels–A Late Flooding Thaw (2005) and Sacrificial Lam (2017)–and the non-fiction book Midwatch in Verse: New Year’s Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941-1946 (2023). His short fiction has been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. The books can be purchased on Amazon and from the publishers.
Author photo: Head Shot
Book Cover: Cover Photo
Fact Sheet:
Gary Guinn taught at a small, southern college, at which he was one of a small number of liberal professors. He retired from college teaching in 2012. He has spent his time since then reading, writing fiction, and traveling.
Gary Guinn 