Peace Corps writers

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A LESION OF DISSENT by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia)
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WHY WE TELL STORIES by Arthur Dobrin (Kenya) and Kenyan Dorcas Kiptoo
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THE FLY THAT FLEW OFF THE HANDLE by Jonathan Toret (Toga)
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SHIPS IN THE DESERT by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan) wins Eric Hoffer Book Award
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New York Times “Literary Destinations” by Paul Theroux (Malawi)
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THIS SALTED SOIL by Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia)
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The Wow Factor | Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon)
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THE WORLD CUP IN QATAR | Steve Kaffen (Russia)
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The Volunteer Who Published Nationally on Wealth Inequality in the U. S. | Robert H. Frank (Nepal)
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Labor of Love | Dan Edwards (Nepal)
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Sherry Morris (Ukraine) — Short story and Flash Fiction Writer
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Paul Theroux on mass travel, British B&Bs and why flying is like ‘being at the dentist’
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JUST KEEP PEDALING by Connie Ness (Uruguay)
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A Cold War Tale That Ended Peacefully by George Brose (Tanzania)
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Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

A LESION OF DISSENT by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia)

  A Lesion of Dissent by Karl Drobnic (Ethiopia 1966-68) Self Published July 2011 216 pages $0.99 (Kindle)   A searing liaison in the sacred chambers of Egypt’s ancient pharaohs as Israeli warplanes rain down terror… frenzy and vengeance as rioting Arabs storm through the strafed streets… and Paul Rhodes’ journey of exile through post-colonial Africa and Asia has just begun. Buffeted by the smuggling, black market deception and patriotic fervor that marked those continents’ passages to independence in the tumultuous Sixties, Paul is impelled country by country to the wild counter-culture havens of San Francisco and a stunning, fateful confrontation with the military powers that stand between him and the woman he cannot forget.

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WHY WE TELL STORIES by Arthur Dobrin (Kenya) and Kenyan Dorcas Kiptoo

  Two Westbury, New York, residents , Dorcas Kiptoo and Arthur Dobrin, who both have a long history with Kenya, will read from their new children’s book, “Why We Tell Stories,” on Thursday, June 1 at 7 pm at the Westbury Memorial Library, 445 Jefferson Street, Westbury, NY. Dorcas Kiptoo, a Kenyan, came to the US in 2010 seeking a better life for herself and her three daughters. After arriving she heard about the Dobrin family and their connection to Kenya, and the Kiptoos ended up living with the Dobrins in Westbury for three years. Arthur and Lyn Dobrin had been Peace Corps Volunteers in Kenya in the 1960s, lived there again in 1975 and then led numerous educational safaris through Adelphi University. Both Dobrins have written books related to Kenya. Why We Tell Stories–with tales such as ”Why Goats Don’t like Leopards,” “Why Hyenas Walk on Stilts,” and “Why There . . .

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THE FLY THAT FLEW OFF THE HANDLE by Jonathan Toret (Toga)

When you have a story to tell, you’re in the midst of a national pandemic, and you’re Jonathan Foret, you write a book. The original story is beautifully illustrated by Alexis Braud, a Cut Off-based professional artist, bringing Jonathan’s story to life in the pages of The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. Jonathan, who is the Executive Director of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, is proud to present his newly published children’s book, The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. “The story is about a little fly named Lester who feels angry a lot, but doesn’t quite know why or what to do about it,” explained the author. After a long journey of trying and failing to feel better, Lester meets a little butterfly, Seymour, who helps him figure out what’s wrong by asking him two simple questions: “What makes you angry?” and “what makes you happy?” Maybe . . .

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SHIPS IN THE DESERT by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan) wins Eric Hoffer Book Award

  Ships in the Desert (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2022) has just won the prestigious Eric Hoffer Book Award for Nonfiction—Culture. Full coverage for all the award winners can be found in the US Review of Books, including the Hoffer judges’ commentary here. Ships also made the Short List for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. As noted in their announcement about this, “Less than 5% of the nominees become grand prize award finalists. This small list or ‘short list’ of finalists is an honored distinction of its own”. Additionally, Ships is currently a finalist for a Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award for Adult Nonfiction—Essays. The winner of that award will be announced on June 15, 2023. Ships was also selected one of the five finalists for an Eyelands International Book Award in the category of Published Memoir. Pulitzer Prize Finalist Kim Barnes has called the book “informative, impassioned, and urgent,” and Peace Corps Worldwide 2022 Writer . . .

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New York Times “Literary Destinations” by Paul Theroux (Malawi)

. New York Times by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) April 30, 2023   My father, like many passionate readers, was a literary pilgrim in his native Massachusetts, a state rich in destinations, hallowed by many of the greatest writers in the language. “Look, Paulie, this is the House of the Seven Gables — go on, count them!” What interested him — what interests me — was not a particular book but a literary intelligence, a Yankee sensibility enshrined in many local books. Boston does not, like Dublin, have a “Ulysses” — few cities do. The nearest novel to being essentially Bostonian might be Edwin O’Connor’s “The Last Hurrah”; its protagonist, Frank Skeffington, based on Boston’s flamboyant James Michael Curley, embodies Boston’s old political culture of blarney and bribery. Richard Henry Dana Jr. fascinated my father, not for writing about Boston but for his example as an admirable Yankee. After enduring the dangerous voyage . . .

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THIS SALTED SOIL by Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia)

  This Salted Soil, by Jamie Kirkpatrick, tells the story of the North African Campaign in World War II, America’s first, but often-overlooked, involvement in the war against Nazi Germany that helped to shape and ultimately secure the Allied victory in that bloody conflict. Using both historical and fictional characters, This Salted Soil, is the story of the battle for Tunisia that took place between November, 1942 and May, 1943. The novel also explores two other related themes: Tunisia’s struggle for independence from France, and the role of Third World countries in the ideological struggle between East and West in the post-war era. Jamie Kirkpatrick served in Kasserine, Tunisia from 1970 to 1972. He was also the Associate Peace Corps Director in Tunisia from 1974 to 1976. Now retired after careers in international service organizations and education, Jamie is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, . . .

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The Wow Factor | Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon)

  by Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) • There’s a joke (una broma) that Mexicans in other parts of Mexico tell among themselves, I learned this week, that goes something like this: If you want to visit San Miguel de Allende, you’ll need to get a U.S. visa. In other words, Mexicans themselves don’t think of SMA as being in Mexico, it’s so overrun with us Norteamericano gringos. This broma, like most jokes, contains a large grain of truth. In the eight years I’ve lived here, I’ve often heard SMA being referred to as “Mexico Lite” and “Gringolandia.” In fact, in 2010 the director Dennis Lanson made a video titled “Gringolandia” about this very fact. According to the most recent estimates, we expats represent only about 10 percent of the residents of San Miguel, but our presence seems to me to be outsized. We gringos are everywhere, all the time – in all . . .

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THE WORLD CUP IN QATAR | Steve Kaffen (Russia)

  It was a World Cup like no other. And author Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96) should know,this being his seventh. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar had everything: great soccer, memorable moments, surprising upsets, a remarkable final, plus controversies and a sustained effort by a small Middle Eastern country of sprawling sand desert to host the world’s most important sports event. The grand display of exciting matches and outstanding performances, day after day, captivated the world and brought to the sport a new generation of enthusiasts. It was also a World Cup of camaraderie for the fans in Qatar and those who gathered at homes and in venues all over the world to share the soccer experience. The author takes the reader to the event as a fan, attending matches with some of the best teams, taking in the 24-hour energy, and exploring Qatar’s rich history. Some 400 original photos . . .

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The Volunteer Who Published Nationally on Wealth Inequality in the U. S. | Robert H. Frank (Nepal)

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1966-68)      Robert H. Frank served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, 1966-68. Afterwards, he received a B. S. in Mathematics from Georgia Tech University in 1966, then an M. A. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, followed by a Ph. D. in Economics from UC Berkeley in 1972. Until 2001, Robert was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. For the 2008-09 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. He contributes to the “Economic View,” a column that appears every fifth week in The New York Times. Alongside these academic achievements, Robert was the chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences from 1992 – 1993, and a Professor . . .

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Labor of Love | Dan Edwards (Nepal)

  Dan Edwards, a retired US senior administrator and Peace Corps Volunteer, has published a book titled Railways in Nepal, which enriched Nepal’s railway history April 10, 2023   The Rana Rule was a golden era for introducing modern technology to Nepal. Despite political setbacks, Rana monarchs implemented several social changes and brought modern technologies to the nation. At a time when many Nepalese political leaders, intellectuals, and experts are unaware of Nepal’s century-old railway history, Dan Edwards, a retired senior US bureaucrat who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal (1966-68)  has reminded Nepalis of the long history in a great detailed archival talk. Edwards has made an enormous contribution to Nepal’s history by publishing Railways in Nepal. Based on archival research and images, the book combines the history of transportation and technology into one package, revealing many unknown truths about Nepal’s railways. A significant number of people from . . .

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Sherry Morris (Ukraine) — Short story and Flash Fiction Writer

Based in the Scottish Highlands Sherry Morris is from a small town in Missouri, but hasn’t let that stop her. She spent the summer of her 18th birthday traveling up the coast of France with a circus and after graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a teaching degree,  joined the Peace Corps. She served two years in Ukraine (1993-95) and spent a further year in Poland before moving to London in 2000. In February 2017 she moved to a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she lives happily ever after. Her work has appeared online with Horror Scribes and Gemini magazine, in print with Molotov Cocktail and the Bath Flash anthology To Carry Her Home. It has also been performed with Liars’ League London and The Space theatre in east London. A story she wrote about her Peace Corps experience — “Soul Mates” appears in A Small Key Opens Big Doors: Vol 3 — The Heart of Eurasia. She . . .

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Paul Theroux on mass travel, British B&Bs and why flying is like ‘being at the dentist’

Sally Howard Wed, March 22, 2023      The democratisation of world travel has its downsides. Paul Theroux, that most celebrated of postwar travel writers, is often ­collared by readers who have read his landmark works – The Great Railway Bazaar, which recounts Theroux’s 1972 journey by rail from Great Britain to Japan, for example; or Riding the Iron Rooster, on his clattering passage through 1980s China to Tibet – and found his accounts at odds with their own experience of, say, a resort-­littered Kenyan coastline, or a ­modern-day ­Singapore awash with super-malls and 7-Elevens. “Readers will say to me, ‘Well, you know, I went there and it wasn’t like that’,” Theroux tells me from his home in Hawaii, where I’ve interrupted the venerable writer feeding his gaggle of pet geese. “What they forget,” he continues, “is that these books are his­torical artefacts. In the case of The Old Patagonian Express, I . . .

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JUST KEEP PEDALING by Connie Ness (Uruguay)

  Just Keep Pedaling is a fast-paced book about life in a slow-paced town. Connie Ness was the first and only PCV to live in the tiny pueblo of Baltasar Brum in Uruguay, the second-smallest country in South America. Ness writes honestly about her conflicted feelings toward the rewards and disappointments of living and working in a culture with different ideas on time and personal responsibility, and about the frustration and isolation of trying to communicate in a different language. In the end she discovered, as so many Peace Corps volunteers do, that doing service work in a developing country is not a one-way street. Her time in Uruguay was a soft clash of cultures, with a little bit of each rubbing off on the other. With over 80 photos of life and work in Uruguay, reading Connie Ness’s engaging account is like listening to a friend who just returned . . .

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A Cold War Tale That Ended Peacefully by George Brose (Tanzania)

  . . . or I’ll Show You My Country’s  Nobel Laureate if You Show Me Yours by George Brose (Tanzania 1965-67)   After my two years of Peace Corps service in Moshi, Tanzania and Loitokitok, Kenya, I was drafted into the US Army in April, 1968.  We had been told in Peace Corps training that former Peace Corps Volunteers could not serve in intelligence units and likewise former intel specialists could not go into the Peace Corps for a number of years after leaving either service.  It was supposedly federal law.  After a year of training in German at the Army Language School in Arlington, VA, I was sent to Germany, but not yet assigned to a unit over there. When I got to Heidelberg I was told I would be sent to an intel unit on the East German border. When I heard that I politely told the . . .

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Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience   The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

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