Archive - 2015

Following is a list of the 2014 memoirs written by RPCVs. Nominate books from this list for the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award. (If your Peace Corps memoir is not listed, and it was published in 2014, please email me at: jcoyneone@gmail.com.) Nominate your favorite book by emailing: jcoyneone@gmail.com THE PEACE CORPS EXPERIENCE AWARD was initiated in 1992. It is presented annually to a Peace Corps Volunteer or staff member for the best depiction of life in the Peace Corps. It can be a personal essay, story, novella, poem, letter, cartoon, song or memoir. The subject matter can be any aspect of the Peace Corps experience – daily life, assignment, travel, host country nationals, other Volunteers, readjustment. In 1997, this award was renamed to honor Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) whose Living Poor has been widely cited as an outstanding telling of the essence of the Peace Corps experience. The . . .

Following is a list of the 2014 novels and short story collections written by RPCVs. Nominate books from this list for the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. (If your novel or collection ((not Peace Corps memoir)) is not listed, and it was published in 2014, please email me at: jcoyneone@gmail.com.) Nominate your favorite book by emailing: jcoyneone@gmail.com. THE MARIA THOMAS FICTION AWARD is named after the novelist Maria Thomas [Roberta Worrick (Ethiopia 1971-73)] who was the author of a well-reviewed novel – Antonia Saw the Oryx First,  and two collections of short stories, Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage: And Other Stories and African Visas: A Novella and Stories, all set in Africa. Roberta lost her life in August, 1989, while working in Ethiopia for a relief agency. She went down in the plane crash that also  killed her husband, Thomas Worrick (Ethiopia 1971-73), and Congressman Mickey Leland of Texas. . . .

Following is a list of the 2014 non-fiction books written by RPCVs. Nominate books from this list for the Paul Cown Non-Fiction Award. (If your non-fiction book ((not Peace Corps memoir)) is not listed, and it was published in 2014, please email me at: jcoyneone@gmail.com.) Nominate your favorite book by emailing: jcoyneone@gmail.com. First given in 1990, the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador from 1966 to 1967. Cowan wrote The Making of An Un-American about his experiences as a Volunteer in Latin America in the ’60s. A longtime activist and political writer for The Village Voice, Cowan died of leukemia in 1988. Murder In Benin: Kaztge Puzey’s Death in the Peace Corps (Peace Corps biography) by Aaron Kase (Burkina Faso 2006-08) Self-published 2014 Young Widower: A Memoir By John W. Evans (Bangladesh 1999-01) Winner of the River Teeth . . .

Please nominate your favorite book published in 2014 and written by an RPCV, PCV or Peace Corps Staff. Anyone may nominate any book, even their own. Certificates and a small cash prize will be presented at the NPCA Conference this coming June at Berkeley, California. These awards from Peace Corps Writers have been given out since 1990  to encourage, recognize and promote Peace Corps writers. Awards are given in the following categories: The Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award The Maria Thomas Fiction Award The Award for Best Poetry Book The Award for Best Travel Book The Award for Best Children’s Book The Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Memoir Award The Award for Best Photography Book Editors Special Awards

2,000 Miles Around the Tree of Life: A Naturalist Hikes the Appalachian Trail by Richard W. Carroll (Central Africa Republic 1976–82) A Peace Corps Writers Book December 2014 126 pages $10.00 (paperback), $8.95 (Kindle) Reviewed by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965–67) • Readers of Richard W. Carroll’s 2,000 Miles Around the Tree of Life about his extraordinary five-month journey from the southernmost point of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, to his arrival at the northernmost end (or beginning depending on where you start) in Maine, need to understand that is not a memoir as the jacket copy states. It is, rather, a journal — something Carrol explains on the final page of the book — meant to “keep the memories alive.” So expect grand courage, an oh-so impressive stoicism as he suffers the often dire rigors of such a momentous hike, and experience his joy vicariously with each discovery he . . .

The WSJ reports that a group of publishers are (finally!) getting together and creating a website for readers. The site, scheduled to go live on April 8, 2015 is called Literary Hub. It will focus on literary fiction and nonfiction, and it will present personal and critical essays, interviews and book excerpts contributed by 70 partners ranging from small press New Directions to heavyweights such as Scribner, Knopf and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Literary magazines such as the Paris Review will also contribute. The site at www.lithub.com will commission original content. Literary Hub partners said that by funneling readers to one central place, they hope that each would be able to reach a broader audience. Duh! Another way to fight Amazon, I guess, finally since we have no bookstores or newspapers writing reviews of what we publish. Well, it is about time. COMING APRIL 8, 2015 LITERARY HUB There is . . .

What the Zhang Boys Know: A Novel in Stories by Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976–77) Press 53 2012 201 pages $17.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 76-78) • Clifford Garstang calls What the Zhang Boys Know a “novel in stories,” and it’s an appropriate characterization. The 12 linked tales all take place in and around a sprawling condo complex in Washington, D.C. called the Nanking Mansion, and the characters within compellingly weave in and out of all the intersecting plots. The big old edifice serves effectively as narrative frame and plot architecture. As in any good novel, the inhabitants of Nanking Mansion, a colorful mix of artists, writers, young professionals and dislocated immigrants, are absorbing and complex. One roots for them, cares about them, despairs of their tragedies major and minor, and celebrates their vindications. In the launching story, we meet everyone in the midst of a complicated melee in . . .

In December, James Beebe (Philippines from 1968-73) published his “Peace Corps memoir” Those Were the Days — A Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines in the Late ‘60s with Peace Corps Writers. I interviewed James about his impressive accomplishments, and about writing his memoir. — Marian • What was your Peace Corp project assignment? I was an Education Volunteer — elementary science, rice production, part-time college teaching. . Tell us about where you lived and worked prior to Peace Corps and  your educational background. I grew up mostly in New Orleans, Louisiana and Panama City, Florida. My education includes: before Peace Corps I was a student at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Florida; Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York University; after Peace Corps, I was a graduate student at Stanford University where I earned an M.A. in anthropology, an M.A. in Food Research (International Development . . .

Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) new book of poems, Bartram’s Garden, has just released from Carnegie Mellon University Press. The collection of poems takes the reader from Brazil’s Bay of All Saints to Philadelphia, from Florida’s brutal humidity to the drought-scorched Cape Verde Islands. Bartram’s Garden takes in the pulse and ache of the natural world: the bittern balanced in the swamp, cashew fruit’s astringent flesh. Passionflower, rattlesnake, feather-tongued hibiscus. With a gardener’s eye for color and motif, and a mother’s open-hearted sensibility, these poems explore vivid landscapes both intimate and foreign. Of this new collection, poet Moira Egan has written, “These poems sing gorgeously ‘with their glowing throats / and feathered tongues.’” Eleanor is the author of another poetry collection, The Book of Sleep (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008) and her Peace Corps memoir, História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013). She . . .