Archive - September 19, 2011

Robert Klein (Ghana 1961–63; 1974–75) is the winner of the Peace Corps Writers  Advancing the Mission Award for his book Being First: An Informal History of the Early Peace Corps that was published in 2010 by Wheatmark. Klein, who taught in Ghana for two years, was a member of the first Peace Corps group to go overseas. He then joined the Peace Corps program staff, serving in Kenya and in Ghana, where he was the country director from 1966 to 1968. Returning to the U.S., Klein had a career as a journeyman educator working in New Frontier and other experimental settings in the areas of remedial education and English as a second language. In 1974 he went back to Ghana, with his family, to serve another term as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Through the years he has remained close friends with his Ghanaian students whom he first taught in 1961, and has made periodic visits back to . . .

Mary Ellen Branan (Poland 1994–96) is the winner of the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for her collection, Weavings published in 2010 by First World Publishing. Dr. Branan lives in Bastrop, Texas, a small river town not far from Austin.  She plied a social worker career in Houston and Austin for 20 years, then returned to the graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, finishing in 1991.  As a PCV she was on the faculty of a English-teacher-training college in Pulawy, Poland, a cultural experience and a landscape that inspired a number of poems included those in Weavings. According to Karla K. Morton, Texas Poet Laureate in  2010: ” Poet Mary Branan’s work chronicles life, death, family, and even Poland, with a warmth and sophistication that only time and artistic sensitivity can bring.” Congratulations, Mary Ellen! Mary Ellen receives a special citation and a cash award from Peace Corps Writers – . . .