Kirsten A. Holmstedt graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Journalism and from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2006 with a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing. Over the past twenty years, Ms. Holmstedt has written for newspapers, business, academia, and magazines. She has won awards for her writing at the regional and national levels.

Ms. Holmstedt was finishing her first year of graduate school in the spring of 2003 when the war in Iraq started. Living in Jacksonville, North Carolina, near Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Ms. Holmstedt was in an ideal location to initiate her research of women serving in combat. Over the next several years, she traveled throughout the United States and spent hundreds of hours interviewing female soldiers, Marines, airmen, and sailors.

As part of her research, Ms. Holmstedt flew to an aircraft carrier off the coast of Florida to interview a woman who worked on the flight deck of the USS Harry S. Truman and to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to meet a soldier who had been wounded by IEDs. She also traveled to Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, and other military installations. She talked to the women in person, by phone, and through e-mail as they traveled back and forth between Iraq and their home bases.

In January 2007, Ms. Holmstedt was part of a panel of authors who spoke to congress
members in Washington, D.C. about the war in Iraq.

Ms. Holmstedt is a member of the Military Writers Society of America.

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