Archive - September 2009

1
National Journal Interviews Peace Corps Director
2
Gabon RPCV Jack Godwin Wins Fourth Fulbright
3
What Did You Read In The Peace Corps, Mommy?
4
Writers Off The Grid
5
Mali RPCV Writes Interactive Narrative Game Of His Peace Corps Story
6
Better Than A Dan Brown Novel
7
Bad Books Written By Good RPCVs
8
Rob Davidson (Grenada 1990-92) Wins New Fiction Prize
9
Self-Publish Your Peace Corps Story Or Not?
10
A PCV Death In Tanzania
11
Everyone Needs an Editor [Not just me]
12
Review: Award Winner The Baker's Boy By Barry Kitterman
13
Taking It On The Chin: Handling Literary Critics
14
The Rules For Writing A Peace Corps Book
15
RPCV Mystery Writer Phillip Margolin Speaking In Central Oregon

National Journal Interviews Peace Corps Director

As the Peace Corps approaches its 50th anniversary, the service program is at something of a crossroads. The agency never fulfilled President Kennedy‘s dream of sending 100,000 Americans abroad every year, and it has been criticized for parachuting too many inexperienced college grads into development jobs they aren’t prepared for. But friends in Congress have secured a 10 percent budget increase for the Peace Corps, and some of the agency’s boosters are hoping for more soon. Enter Aaron Williams, a volunteer in the Caribbean in the late-1960s who has now returned to lead the agency. He spoke to NationalJournal.com’s David Gauvey Herbert about putting a price tag on the Peace Corps experience, the dangers of tying the agency too closely to American foreign policy and his own experience in the Dominican Republic. NJ: You served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970. What doors did . . .

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Gabon RPCV Jack Godwin Wins Fourth Fulbright

Jack Godwin (Gabon 1982-84), who recently published Clintonomics, is off to Swansea University of Wales this spring for three weeks of lecturing on a Fulbright grant.  Jack will be speaking about his new book and meeting with officials of the local Welsh Assembly government to discuss international trade and economic development issues, as well as recruit Swansea students to study in California in conjunction with Sac State’s Global Education foreign exchange program.  Jack is the chief international officer and director of the Office of Global Education at Sac State.  His book, he says, “is a political science book, despite the name. It’s a book about the political economy. I compare Clinton’s and Reagan’s governing philosophies relative to the challenges we face in the global era.” This is Godwin’s fourth Fulbright and his last one.  “I am honored but I am also really disappointed because there’s a law, there’s a rule, . . .

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What Did You Read In The Peace Corps, Mommy?

Tina Thuermer (Zaire 1973-75) grew up in India, Africa and Germany, and was at the airport in Ghana in 1961, aged 10, to greet the first Volunteers who arrived to serve there.  That inspired her to join the Peace Corps after she finished college at Bard. She served as a PCV English teacher at a Protestant mission in Zaire after only  two weeks of pedagogical training. Today, Tina teaches journalism and Theory of Knowledge at the Washington International School in Washington D.C. and is considering rejoining the Peace Corps when she retires, assuming she can ever afford to retire. Having read about PCVs and what they are reading (or read) on this website, Tina sent me the following account of  her reading time in Zaire, back in the day.  One of the wonderful things about being in Peace Corps back in the day was that without the internet, a phone, TV, or even mail, one . . .

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Writers Off The Grid

PCVs and RPCVs going ‘off the grid’ (where electricity is either missing, or sporadic) will be interested in this gizmo, the ‘NEO Writer’. NEO is the modern equivalent of a light-weight portable typewriter that is easy to pack around (less than 2 pounds) and runs seemingly forever on 3 AA batteries. Better yet, after returning ‘to the grid’ you can download your writing to your PC in seconds and get on with editing, blogging, or emailing it off to your editor or to the folks at home. Since many RPCV writers need something quick, light and easy to pack around where computers fear to go, Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963–65) thought that his account of “Neo and Me” would interest you. Bear in mind, however, that it cannot distract you with access the Internet (which is nice, sometimes!). This article was originally published in the June 2009 issue of ECS Nepal . . .

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Mali RPCV Writes Interactive Narrative Game Of His Peace Corps Story

On the website Gamasutra, the Art & Business of Making Games there is a piece on Aaron Oldenburg, who was a PCV in Mali and has come up with a great idea for a game that tells the story of his time in Africa. Now at the University of Baltimore as an assistant professor, he has created an interactive narrative, much like being a counselor for the player, he said during a Tuesday session at the GDC Austin Game Writers Summit. Here is his story, as reported by Kris Graft: Oldenburg is the man behind the Flash-based interactive narrative called The Mischief of Created Things, a work based on his two years as a Peace Corps worker in the West African country of Mali. During his time there, he had journal entries, letters home, and many pictures of his experiences. “Coming back and telling stories wasn’t satisfying. It didn’t go . . .

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Better Than A Dan Brown Novel

Here’s what iUniverse’s  “product description” says of novel Tanga, written by Eric Madeen, an RPCV from Gabon and  currently an associate professor of English at Tokyo City University. After reading this “product description” you can’t say RPCVs lack imagination! TANGA is a novel of forbidden love set in a rain forest village in the heart of Africa. It seamlessly merges adventure, romance, and the psycho-thriller while deconstructing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, with David undergoing the Kurtz syndrome — to a lesser degree, of course. Like Kurtz, David enters the heart of “blackest” Africa as a white man, and as a Peace Corps volunteer of genuine idealism, he finds himself both “corrupted by” and also empathizing with the Africans he becomes involved with, and tempted to “go native.” In sum, TANGA is an irresistible love story. From the moment David sees Assam naked in the stream, right up through his final . . .

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Bad Books Written By Good RPCVs

If the Peace Corps did anything, it turned us into readers and we are better for it. But being a reader doesn’t make us writers. That’s the rub. Having a great (or not so great) Peace Corps experience doesn’t turn us into writers, either, though it might help when it comes to the story told. Being an English major doesn’t make one a writer, and it can even hurt an RPCV writer, having read (and then trying to write like) one of those great writers from lit classes. What I’ve seen editing PeaceCorpsWriters are a lot of self-published books that have very limited value and aren’t well written. For example, some RPCVs think that they can collect all those letters home, slap them together, add a few grainy black-and-white-photos, and have a book. Rarely, are those Letters Home worth reading by anyone outside of the family. The other Peace Corps . . .

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Rob Davidson (Grenada 1990-92) Wins New Fiction Prize

Rob Davidson (Grenada 1990-92), who served with his wife on the island of Carriacou, and who went onto earn his doctoral candidate in American literature at Purdue University, is the author of a collection of stories entitled Field Observations that won the Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Award a few years back, and he has a new honor to his credit. Camber Press just announced the winner of the first annual Camber Press Fiction Chapbook Award. It is Rob Davidson’s entry entitled “Criminals” chosen by writer Ron Carlson from among a group of unidentified submissions. Davidson, a resident of Chico, California, sets his story on the small Caribbean island of Carriacou. Our distant, academic narrator takes us to this island where goats outnumber people two to one. Natives practice grudges, judgments, stubbornness, and things are never as simple as right or wrong. More accurately, they’re about how one resolves issues within the . . .

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Self-Publish Your Peace Corps Story Or Not?

I have been writing the occasional blog about self-published books, mostly as a way of encourage people to write them, and while encouraging them to write, to suggest–urge–that they get a good editor (or 2) to work on their prose and poetry. Writing good prose is not easy and it takes a lot of work just to write one good sentence, let alone two good sentences. Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1965-67) a creative writing professor as well as a novelist dropped me a note recently that I think adds to my discussion about self-published books. Here is what Lauri has to say: “I have read a few fine books that were self-published.  An RPCV friend at the University of Michigan Flint self-published a novel that I read from cover to cover and enjoyed.  One of my favorite travel books was self-published.  For every one such well-written self-published book there are hundreds of mediocre . . .

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A PCV Death In Tanzania

In the fall of 1964, just back from Ethiopia and working for the Division of Volunteer Support, I met Peverley Dennett and Bill Kinsey during their training program at Syracuse University. Bill had been assigned to Malawi and Peppy [as Peverley was called] to Tanzania. In those early years of Peace Corps Training groups were often trained together on college campuses, but that decision was changed because too many Trainees from different projects were meeting up and falling in love. The Peace Corps might be the “greatest job you’ll ever love” but the Peace Corps didn’t want you “falling in love” during Training.] Bill and Peverley were two young goodlooking kids just out of college. Bill, as I recall, had a bright smile, blond hair cut into a crew cut, an All-American looks. Peverley was sweet and shy and very pretty. They were the picture of what Peace Corps Volunteers . . .

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Everyone Needs an Editor [Not just me]

Some of you might have read about Tess Gallagher [the widow of Raymond Carver, and his second wife] who wants to publish 17 of Carver’s original short stories. Carver was a minimalist [A literary style exemplifying economy and restraint], and his most successful collection of stories, and what put ‘minimalist’ on the map, was entitled, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It was published by Knopf in ’81 and edited by Gordon Lish, the prince of minimalist editors. Gallagher, herself a well known writer and poet, wants to publish her late husband’s stories as they were original written. Carver, who died in ’88 at 50, had tried to set the record straight himself. According to an article in The New York Times [The Arts Section, on Wednesday, October 17, 2007] “He restored and republished five of the stories” and published them in a collection entitled, Where I’m . . .

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Review: Award Winner The Baker's Boy By Barry Kitterman

Poet Ann Neelon teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Murray State University and edits New Madrid magazine. Here she reviews The Baker’s Boy by Barry Kitterman — winner of the 2009 Maria Thomas Peace Corps Writers Award for Fiction. • The Baker’s Boy by Barry Kitterman (Belize 1976–78) Southern Methodist University Press 2008 336 pages $22.50 Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978–79) In reading Barry Kitterman, I find myself rediscovering the pleasures of reading Dostoyevsky — admittedly an extravagant claim in response to a first novel. Like Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot and/or The Possessed, The Baker’s Boy constitutes a powerful work of moral imagination. Brothers Albert and Junie and their cohorts-including Broke-hand, Mouse, Snot, Milkboy, Corky, Cowboy, Whiteboy, Redboy, Bigboy, Leeboy, and Blackboy-are no choir boys, as Tanner Johnson, their teacher at the New Hope School, duly notes (this despite the fact that Albert and . . .

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Taking It On The Chin: Handling Literary Critics

I am amused when first time published writers, usually self published vanity authors, get all testy with me when their writing is criticized, even lambasted, by one of our reviewers on this site, or by yours truly. Having been in this game of writing for some forty years, with 25 plus books published, I have had my fair share (actually, more than my fair share) of bad reviews, put downs, and slam dunks from critics and good friends. This last weekend I came across a wonderful collection of put downs and slam dunks by writers. The book is entitled W.O.W.: Writers On Writing,edited by Jon Winoku and published first in 1986 by Running Press Books of Philadelphia. There are many back-and-forths about Truman Capote who really bought the acid tongues out in other writers. Everyone picked on poor Truman. Here’s a sample of some of the snide remarks that the . . .

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The Rules For Writing A Peace Corps Book

There are no rules. And that is what is so great about writing a book. A friend, a successful writer/editor/creative writing professor and RPCV, has been reading my blogs on “Peace Corps books” and she sent me these wise words on how Peace Corps writers should go about the task of writing a book. Her list: Hopeful Peace Corps writers should take writing courses from reputable instructors to learn the basics and to have the opportunity to workshop their writing among peers. They should also read lots of good How-To books on the craft. There are a gazzillion of them out there. They should avoid at all costs: exclamation points, stereotyping, cliches, and all other proofs of lazy writing. They should plan on revising each chapter or piece at least ten times. Quality writing is all about revision. They should NOT confuse explicit, titillating, borderline-pornographic sex scenes with “intimacy” with . . .

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RPCV Mystery Writer Phillip Margolin Speaking In Central Oregon

Author and former criminal defense attorney Phillip Margolin will speak in Central Oregon. This is a piece that appeared today (September 1, 2009) in The Bulletin by David Jasper. It is an interview with  Phillip Margolin (Liberia 1966-68) one of the  more successful RPCV writers. • “Good afternoon, law offices,” says a receptionist for author Phillip Margolin, focus of Deschutes Public Library’s Celebrate Oregon Author series for the month of September. The Portland-based writer of 14 best-sellers may have stepped away from a 25-year career as an attorney back in 1996, but that didn’t mean he was going to surrender his office. “I just kept my old office,” says Margolin, 65. “I like having a place to come … to. For me, it’s nicer to have an office. There’s just a lot of stuff I do downtown. I work out downtown … take coffee breaks and snacks and lunch.” He’ll . . .

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