Bruce Craven is a member of the Columbia Business School Executive Education faculty in New York City. In addition to directing and teaching in a variety of executive programs, he teaches graduate business students his popular elective Leadership Through Fiction.  His book Win or Die: Leadership Secrets from Game of Thrones, was published in March 2019 by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.  The book is currently being translated into Russian and Turkish. He wrote the novel Fast Sofa (1993) which was published in Japanese and German. He also co-wrote the script for the film adaptation, starring Jennifer Tilly, Jake Busey and Crispin Glover. His collection of poetry, Buena Suerte in Red Glitter will be published in 2019 by Red Dirt Press. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Coachella Valley in California.

Good People

In eighteen sixty four, the National

Union Party crushed the Democratic

Party. War Democrats gave electoral

college boost to Lincoln. Heroic

men died as the Union held an election

during a civil war.  Soldiers could vote

from the front. Confederate men’s defection

disenfranchised them. They killed for the hope

of Dixie, state’s rights, maybe enslavement’s profit.

My ancestors fell in both categories.

Good people? Undoubtedly. Still, some saw fit

to conscript humans to serve them in a story

of power, threat, even linking their right

to Christian justice. Moral truth called for a fight.