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After serving as a U.S. Marine in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, Phil Klay came home and turned the experience into fiction. (philklay.com)

Iraq War veteran Phil Klay has won the National Book Award for fiction. The judges described the short stories in Klays collection Redeployment as brutal, piercing and sometimes darkly funny.

Klay served as a U.S. Marine in Iraqs Anbar province in 2007 and 2008. He came home and turned that experience into fictional stories, some about being in the combat theater, others about the struggle coming home.

In his emotional acceptance speech last night, Klay said I came back home not knowing what to think. When Dexter Filkins reviewed the book, he called it the best thing written about what the war did to peoples souls.

Klay got started writing for The New York Times online project Home Fires, which featured the writing of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Peter Catapano at the Times published me and a lot of really just very smart, talented veteran writers, Klay toldHere & Nows Robin Young. Its really important to have a community that is concerned with the same topics, working through the same topics that you are, because you talk ideas with each other, you read others work and are inspired and challenged and have the things that you thought you believed undermined by some really smart thinking.

By Phil Klay

We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. Im a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.

First time was instinct. I hear OLeary go, Jesus, and theres a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way hed lap up water from a bowl. It wasnt American blood, but still, theres that dog, lapping it up. And thats the last straw, I guess, and then its open season on dogs.

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Iraq War Vet Wins National Book Award For Fiction

Ann Khalid did not feel well but she insisted on dancing a brief scene from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with her classmates. The 12-year-old is determined to one day have a career dancing and teaching ballet, not an easy path in a country torn for years by conflict.

"My school and my church are the two things I love the most in Baghdad," the soft-spoken Khalid, in her black leotard and white ballet shoes, said with pride after the dance.

If she has a shot at her dream, it's because of the Baghdad School of Music and Ballet.

The school has managed to survive decades of turmoil, a feat that speaks to the resilience of Baghdad's residents through war after war. The Iraqi capital's past as a Middle East center of culture is a distant memory, but the school has carved out a tiny island of creativity amid the violence that is an inescapable part of daily life and the religious conservatism that now defines public life.

"Where else in Iraq can you walk into a school and listen to a small boy playing Antonio Vivaldi on his violin?" boasts the school principal, Ahmed Salim Ghani, himself a virtuoso player of the contrabass and the oud, an Arab instrument resembling the lute.

Another rarity: It isn't segregated by sex like almost all Iraqi schools. Male and female students take classes together from kindergarten to high school.

"The second you walk through the gate, you find yourself in a different world, one of art and culture," Ghani said.

Ghani proudly declares himself a "genuine" Baghdadi. He speaks nostalgically about Baghdad's golden age ? the 1960s through to the 1980s. Back then, the city's elite patronized art and culture, while deeply secular, albeit dictatorial, regimes ensured that enough of the nation's petrodollars went to the arts. The school, founded in 1968, thrived.

Black-and-white footage of a 1977 school production of The Nutcracker shows a relatively high level of discipline, with the children dancing in professional-level costumes. In class photos from the era, the schoolgirls and female teachers wear miniskirts. The boys wear blazers and bow ties.

Things rapidly worsened for Baghdad and the school with Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. U.N. sanctions devastated the economy, ruptured the nation's social fabric and forced hundreds of thousands to leave their homes in rural areas. They descended on the city to find work, bringing with them the conservative traditions of their villages.

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Iraq: Ballet School Speaks to City's Resilience

Special Salute to Local Soldier who Died in Iraq 10 Years Ago
A bittersweet tribute Friday for a local fallen hero. Military and community members came out for a special salute to Army Private First Class Isaiah Hunt.

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Special Salute to Local Soldier who Died in Iraq 10 Years Ago - Video

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Andrew Cash debates sending Canadian troops to fight in Iraq - October 7, 2014
Andrew Cash, NDP MP for Davenport in Toronto, speaks during the debate on sending Canadian troops to fight in Iraq - October 7, 2014.

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Andrew Cash debates sending Canadian troops to fight in Iraq - October 7, 2014 - Video