Archive - July 6, 2017

  Now isn’t the time to cut Peace Corps funding by Taylor Dibbert (Guatemala 2006-08) first published by The Hill 7/5/17 •   Donald Trump’s transactional tendencies, proclivity for autocrats and superficial grasp of world affairs means that there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about American foreign policy in the coming years. With the release of the Trump administration’s proposed budget, it’s obvious that the president doesn’t understand the importance of American soft power. Trump’s plans to gut funding for international development, foreign aid and diplomacy are woefully misguided. He needs to urgently reconsider his current approach because it’s harmful to American interests. More specifically, team Trump plans to reduce Peace Corps spending by close to $12 million immediately. While many had been worried about an even bigger Peace Corps funding cut, this is not good news and could portend even deeper cuts in the years ahead. It’s time for Trump . . .

These writers are all RPCVs whom I wrote about recently for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs website. The eight writers tell how they have used their overseas experiences in their writing careers. JC Writing From Another Country Throughout the history of literature in the United States, American writers have looked towards, and gone to, foreign countries to seek inspiration, new experiences, and find work. Henry James in The American (1878) and Samuel Clemens in The Innocents Abroad (1869) were early writers who wrote about their new experience in Europe. Next, we had Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel of a half-dozen ex-pats in Paris The Sun Also Rises. Not only novelists, but poets, too, traveled abroad. T.S. Eliot and Robert Penn Warren are two. They went to England to find work and sources of inspiration. Robert Penn Warren, the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry, first went to London in . . .