John Milas’ novel, The Militia House, is inspired by a portion of his experience deployed to Afghanistan. He says, “The book is a horror novel because I found the war to be scary amidst a branch of service and mostly an entire country of people (the U.S.) who were not afraid of the war. My goal was to make the war scary for readers. We’re too conditioned to accept war as a norm to actually feel afraid of realistic portrayals of war. It’s like asking someone to play Call of Duty and seriously reflect on the nature of killing. It’s not going to happen.”
John Milas is a writer from Illinois. His debut novel, The Militia House (Henry Holt, 2023), was nominated for a 2023 Shirley Jackson Award, longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and additionally recognized by Indies Introduce, Indie Next, and The Audacious Book Club. He received a Walter E. Dakin fellowship to attend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2024.
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