Archive - July 8, 2018

  Using several sources, mainly Marian Haley Beil’s (Ethiopia 1962-64) listings, started in the 1979 Peace Corps Writers & Readers and currently with 452 titles and available at this website) as well as the 1989 annotated bibliography compiled by Robert B. Marks Ridinger, and also the Library of Congress bibliography, Larry Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) has published a handy short text entitled Peace Corps Bibliography which contains published work by volunteers and staff about the agency and/or their service. The book is divided into three sections; (1) journals, letters and memoirs, (2) anthologies and (3) history. More than 230 volunteer and staff have written and published journals, letters and memoirs. There are more than a dozen anthologies. The book is available via Amazon.com books. Prior to the Internet and Print-On-Demand books, few Peace Corps Volunteers published accounts of their experience. Of all the first-person accounts, Larry has found that only twelve percent (12%) were published . . .

I have the great pleasure this time of interviewing one of the most lovely and interesting of writers: Carole Sojka. Carole has lived a lifetime of adventures, notably with her husband as one of the first thousand Peace Corps volunteers, and traveling all over the world. She worked, traveled, raised a family, and in retirement, turned her hand to writing. And so a new adventure began. Carole has two books to date and a third on the way in her Andi Battaglia police series, set in Florida. The first, A Reason to Kill, introduces Andi as she tries to break away from her past and start fresh. But of course the past always has a way of sneaking up on you. In her second book, So Many Reasons to Die, it’s Andi’s partner Greg who finds that the past is hard to lay to rest. Especially when she winds up murdered on . . .