About the Author

Freelance writer and citizen-soldier by day, and secret (writing as "Charlie Sherpa") blogger by night, Randy Brown was preparing in 2010 to deploy as the sole "knowledge manager" for an Iowa National Guard unit of 3,000 soldiers. ("Historian, librarian, lessons-learned reporter—it was sexier to say my job was 'Brigade Staff Jester,'" he jokes.) After a paperwork SNAFU dropped him off the list, he retired with 20 years of military service and a previous overseas deployment. He then went to Afghanistan anyway, embedding with his former colleagues as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011.

Brown traveled the world as a child in an active-duty U.S. Air Force family in the 1970s, then landed permanently and happily in the American Midwest. A former editor of community and metro newspapers, as well as national trade and “how-to” consumer magazines, he is now a freelance writer and editor based in Central Iowa.

A 20-year military veteran with one overseas deployment, he subsequently authored the award-winning 2015 collection Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire. A chapbook, So Frag & So Bold: Short Poems, Aphorisms & other Wartime Fun, was published in 2021.
His poetry and essays have appeared widely in print and on-line, as well as anthologies. He even appeared as an “on screen” character in the 2021 True War Stories anthology from Z2 Comics, Denver.

Brown is a three-time poetry finalist in the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards. He co-edited the 2019 Military Writers Guild anthology Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War and the 2023 literary anthology Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear. 

In 2015, he curated the non-fiction collection Reporting for Duty: U.S. Citizen-Soldier Journalism from the Afghan Surge, 2010-2011.
Brown was the winner of the 2018 “Untold Stories” poetry contest administered by Flyover: Journal of Writing & the Environment.

Brown's often-humorous military-themed poetry and non-fiction have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. He was the 2015 winner of the inaugural Madigan Award for humorous military-themed writing, presented by Negative Capability Press, Mobile, Ala.

He is the current poetry editor at the literary journal As You Were, published twice a year by the non-profit Military Experience & the Arts. 

Brown was the 2012 winner of the Military Reporters and Editors' (M.R.E.) independent-blogging category, and a past finalist in the Milblogging.com awards' reporter (2011) and veteran (2012) categories.

He is also a member of Military Reporters & Editors, the Military Writers Guild, Military Writers Society of America, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
As “Charlie Sherpa,” he writes about modern war poetry at: www.fobhaiku.com; and the “how-to” of military writing at: www.aimingcircle.com.

He occasionally continues to write about citizen-soldier topics at: www.redbullrising.com.