Archive - August 29, 2012

2011 Winner of the Poetry Award–Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002-04) author of Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Jeff Fearnside taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan from 2002 to 2004. After completing his service, he remained in Central Asia for another two years, marrying his Kazakhstani bride Valentina. Their courtship and his experiences in general while living overseas were explored in his chapbook Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Most of his work since Peace Corps has involved education in some way, from managing the Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to teaching at Western Kentucky University and Prescott College. As a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at WKU, he was nominated for a Faculty Award for Teaching, one of that institution’s highest . . .

Winner of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award (Memoir) for 2011 is Chris Honore’ (Colombia (1967-69) for his book Out in the All of It, published by iUniverse. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Chris Honore’ was born in occupied Denmark during WWII. His father was in the Danish resistance. His mother still remembers the day the Germans arrived and the day they left. After the war, they immigrated to America. Chris attended San Jose State University and then the University of California, at Berkeley, where he earned a teaching credential, an M.A. and a Ph.D. And then he joined the Peace Corps. Since then he has been a freelance journalist based in Ashland, Oregon. He is married and his wife owns a famous bookstore on Main Street in this charming town. Their son is a cinematographer and lives in Hollywood. . . .