Archive - 2016

ROB SCHMITZ (China 1996-98) first arrived in China in 1996 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Sichuan province. He is now the China correspondent for American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” the largest business news program in the U.S. In 2012, he exposed fabrications in Mike Daisey’s account of Apple’s Chinese supply chain on “This American Life.” The work was a finalist for the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards and an award from the Education Writers Association for his reporting on China. Schmitz maintains a blog — Chinopoly— and in May, his first book, Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road, will be published. • In an interview with Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet, on his blog Shanghai Scrap, Rob talks about how the Peace Corps lead him into journalism. Scrap: How does one go from Peace Corps volunteer to China Bureau . . .

Chinese Lu Chuan will direct and produce River Town, the Tristine Skyler adaptation of the memoir River Town: Two Years On The Yangtze, by New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler. Jamie Gordon and Courtney Potts of Fugitive Films are producing. This Peace Corps memoir by Peter, his first book, will depict a celebrated American writer’s journey to China for the long-awaited Chinese publication of his memoir, triggering memories from 20 years earlier when he taught English literature as a PCV to Chinese college students while on the brink of a nation’s unprecedented change. Lu’s film credits include The Missing Gun, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, City Of Life And Death and The Last Supper. He last directed  Of The Ghostly Tribe, which grossed $106 million in mainland China within its first weeks of release. He is in postproduction on Born In China for Disney, which will be released this summer in China and April 2017 in the U.S. In addition to being a staff . . .

The March 7, 2016 issue of The New Yorker features two articles by RPCVs. Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) is a staff writer living now with his family in Cairo, and he writes “Living-Room Democracy,” an article on political candidates in Egypt who go door-to-door seeking votes. He starts with Yusuf Hasan Yusuf, a candidate for the new national parliament from rural Upper Egypt, who has no public political activity. Yusuf has no platform, and does not talk about issues, policies, or potential legislation when he campaigns. He has never made a single public campaign promise. Yet he still wins elections. Peter then goes onto interview and follow other candidates, mostly in Upper Egypt, on their home visits in this political season, and he does a quick evaluation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice candidate, as well as, fill in how Upper Egypt has gone from nomadic Bedouin to a fledgling democracy. In . . .

Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96) has just published her third travel book, Sailing between the Seas: The Panama Canal. Leita, among many other careers, worked with Roma (Gypsies) for fifteen years, became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal at the age of 55, then went to work for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti for five years. She retired in Florida in 2002, and wrote a memoir of Senegal, Roller Skating in the Desert. In 2012 with Peace Corps Writers, she published In the Valley of Atibon which chronicles her experiences as a middle-aged white woman who goes to Haiti filled with good intentions to manage Hôpital Albert Schweitzer and its community development program. What unfolds for her, however, is a hell filled with young revolutionaries and vagabonds who threaten her life, and the very existence of the hospital and the program. Prompted by these experiences she delves into the . . .

The winner of the Peace Corps Writers Best Book of Poetry in 2013 for  The Land of the Four Rivers, Matthew Hamilton, has a new collection entitled, Lips Open and Divine. These new poems will be published this spring by Winter Goose. It is a collection that “confronts some of the moral consequences of our time.” These poems are “void of hectoring language and insensitivity, forcing us to examine our most private and emotional complexities. Matthew Hamilton is a former Soldier, Congressional Aide, Peace Corps Volunteer, and Benedictine Monk. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Fairfield University and is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in a variety of national and international journals, including Atticus Review, Coe Review, Noctua Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Burnt Bridge, Boston Literary Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and The Transnational. Currently, he is the Librarian at . . .