Dewaine Farria is the author of the novel Revolutions of All Colors (Syracuse University Press, November 2020). Tobias Wolff selected the novel as the winner of Syracuse University’s 2019 Veteran’s Writing contest. Dewaine’s short stories and essays have appeared in Literary Hub, the New York Times, Rumpus, the Southern Humanities Review, CRAFT, and the Daily Beast. He is a frequent contributor to War on the Rocks. His work has also appeared in the anthologies, Our Best War Stories: Prize-winning Poetry and Prose from the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Award (Middle West Press, October 2020) and Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li (A Public Space Books, September 2021). He has served as a contributing editor for the Maine Review and an instructor in the Voices From War Writing Workshop. As a U.S. Marine, Dewaine served in Jordan and Ukraine. Besides his stint in the military, Dewaine spent most of his professional life working for the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS), with assignments in the North Caucasus, Kenya, Somalia, and Occupied Palestine. Dewaine was awarded UNDSS’s Bravery Award for his actions during an attack on a UN compound in Mogadishu in June 2013. He holds a BS from the University of the State of New York-Albany, an MA in International and Area Studies from the University of Oklahoma, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Dewaine has received fellowships from the National Security Education Program, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He presently lives in the Philippines with his wife, three children, two cats, and a dog.
“Revolutions of All Colors is a vivid, original novel of young men struggling with questions of race, injustice, personal and political violence; of responsibility to family, friends, lovers, sexual identity—of what it means to be a man. With great assurance the narrative ranges from New Orleans to Ukraine, Somalia, Brooklyn, Oklahoma, and from the military world to the worlds of prison, dance, mixed martial arts, even municipal government. It is a remarkable achievement.”—Tobias Wolff, Veterans Writing Award Judge
”Farria writes with vibrant, breathtaking elegance, unabashed to imbue even bleak corners of the world with shades of humor and simmering sexuality.”—Shelf Awareness
”Revolutions of All Colors masterfully conveys, in just 200 pages, the heaviness of lives constantly under examination because of race and sexuality, and their love for their country, each other, and themselves. I thought the novel was poignant and original, but it was Farria’s writing that put it over the top for me. His writing really blew me away. It is easy to see how the book won the Syracuse University Veterans Writing Award.”—Book Riot
”Farria chronicles in his engrossing debut the lives of three young Black men partly through stories of their parents and a surrogate father figure. Black Panther activist Ettie Moten leaves New Orleans in the mid 1970s to be a prison counselor in Oklahoma and has a son, Simon. Coworker Frank Mathis helps to guide Simon along with Frank’s two sons, Michael and Gabriel. Though Ettie’s voice captivates, the story mainly belongs to the boys, whose presence is felt through indelible turns of phrase. A wonderfully kaleidoscopic portrait emerges of Black masculinity. This grips the reader from start to finish.”—Publishers Weekly
“There’s such ambition and such range in Farria’s superb Revolutions of All Colors, which traces the American relationship to war and policing and race and violence and masculinity across forty years within one fascinating family. With vibrant characters and masterful evocations of everything from the work of contractors in 2000s Somalia to that of Black Panthers in 1970s New Orleans, this is a compulsively readable novel and a wonderful meditation on the complexities of American identity.”—Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, winner of the National Book Award
“Revolutions of All Colors is a sweeping exploration of love and war, personhood and manhood, destiny and fate. Crossing continents and generations, the book sizzles with humanity’s song—tough and tender—and, like Faulkner, it reveals the secret workings of far-flung hearts. Dewaine Farria’s is a needed, fresh new voice in the American literary landscape.”—Connie May Fowler, author of Before Women had Wings
”Your heart will at different times be comforted and incensed in Revolutions, which is so good this reviewer read the book twice.”—Coffee or Die
”Depicting the many ways in which we are transformed by struggle, Farria’s compelling debut novel connects the injustices of the past with the urgencies of the present, while foregrounding the hope, dignity, and perseverance required for a better tomorrow.”—T. Geronimo Johnson, author of Hold It ‘Til It Hurts
”...artfully weaves the complexities of racialized characters not only in the military itself, but in a nation in which everyday life is influenced by its presence. Farria, co-editor of The Maine Review, skillfully embodies multiple voices across generations, a real strength of the book’s narrative. ...dexterously explores sexual fluidity, masculinity and the corporeality of intersecting identities.”—Portland Press Herald”
Revolutions of All Colors
All photography provided by Iryna Farria