Military Swofford joined the U.S. Marine Corps at the age of 18, and shortly after he turned 20 he was deployed to
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, awaiting the start of the Persian Gulf War. He was a
lance corporal while serving as a
Scout Sniper Trainee with the
Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) Platoon of
2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. Swofford was published in and was the-editor-in-chief of the
American River Review, an award-winning literary magazine. Later, he received a
Bachelor's degree in English from
University of California, Davis, and earned a
Master of Fine Arts from the
Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the
University of Iowa. Swofford committed himself to writing in 1995, at the age of 24, In 2004, he received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir for
Jarhead. Following his time at the University of Iowa, Swofford served as an English professor at
Lewis and Clark College, where he taught a class in the school's "Inventing America" program, until he sold the
film rights to
Jarhead. and currently teaches creative writing at
Carnegie Mellon University. His first novel,
Exit A, was published in January 2007.
Exit A chronicles the life of a boy who grows up on an American Air Force Base in Japan and falls in love with the base general's daughter.
Television and film Swofford co-produced and narrated the 2006 documentary
Semper Fi, is featured in
Richard E. Robbins’s documentary
Operation Homecoming, and has made appearances on several talk shows and in documentaries. ==Personal life==