Archive - November 30, 2010

Mark Brazaitis is the author of The Other Language: Poems, winner of the 2008 ABZ Poetry Prize. He is also the author of The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Steal My Heart, the novel that won the 2001 Maria Thomas Fiction Award given by Peace Corps Writers. Brazaitis served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 1990 to 1993 and as a Peace Corps technical trainer in the same country from 1995 to 1996. Currently, he directs the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at West Virginia University. On December 7, 2010, Mark will be reading at the Kent State Student Center, Room 306, and answering questions about the Peace Corps! There’s a Facebook page for the reading: http://en-gb.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150186528348926&index=1 Check it out!

Often when an RPCV book is reviewed on this site and receives a negative review I get an angry email from the irate author who says something to the effect, “I wrote it, therefore, it is good!” Well, having published something like twenty-five books and received more than my ‘fair share’ of negative reviews, I can understand the feeling. But if a writer —  especially a ‘self-publishing writer — has the audacity (yes, audacity!) to publish anything and then put the book out into the market place for others to buy and read, then, well, they have to suffer the slings and arrows, and perhaps praise, for what they wrote. That’s what publishing is all about. But if you are George W. Bush and you write your memoir and it gets into the hands of George Packer (Togo 1982–83) to review it for The New Yorker . . . well, watch out. Packer does a . . .