Archive - June 2024

2024 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award Winner One Beats The Bush by Riall Nolan (Senegal 1965-68) The Book Folks Publisher June 2023 235 pages $16.99 (Hardcover)     Riall Nolan (Senegal 1965-68) Riall Nolan (Senegal 1965-68) grew up in upstate New York, and joined the Peace Corps after graduating from college. He got sent to Senegal, in West Africa, an experience from which he has never fully recovered. While there he began to notice that many development projects didn’t work very well, largely because outside experts lacked basic cultural understanding of local communities. That’s when he decided to become an anthropologist. He headed to the University of Sussex where he obtained a doctorate, and began working around the world as a development planner. He spent nearly twenty years overseas, in places like Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Tunisia and Sri Lanka. When he returned to the US at long . . .

In the news – Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66)     DANBURY — Soraya Bilbao says the South Pacific is where she “fell in love with teaching.” She was a Peace Corps volunteer teacheing in a classroom in Atata, an outer island in the Kingdom of Tonga, a nation of 170 islands located west of the Cook Islands and east of Fiji. She taught in a classroom in an area where she was unfamiliar with the native language. So at the same time she taught English, she struggled to learn the language her students spoke, Tongan. It was a challenge that Bilbao sought and embraced. At the time, she was working in the nonprofit sector. Bilbao, who now teaches at Danbury High School, said because of her three years in Tonga, she learned she wanted to become an educator. “It just never crossed my mind to . . .

Lost Hollow by Donna S. Frelick (Gambia 1976-78) (335 pages) July 2024 $2.99 (Kindle 2298 KB) Book 1 of 1 Alienville Series       Dr. Moira McCann worries when her mercurial twin Claire fails to show up for a rare sisterly visit. Claire’s last text was from a small town in the North Carolina mountains—Allenville. And now Claire won’t respond to any texts or calls; her phone is dead. Which means Moira—the responsible sister—has to go looking for her. Allenville Police Chief Seth Call juggles the usual town disputes and the everyday trouble outsiders get into in his remote county. But early summer brings a special kind of chaos: it’s mating season in these mountains for a certain vicious species, and anyone is prey if they wander too far off the known paths. When Moira seeks his help finding her sister, Seth can’t hint at any of the real . . .

The One-Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World by Alexa West (Bulgaria) New World Library September 2023 328 pages                     2024 Peace Corps Writers Best Travel Writing Award In 2011, Alexa West sat on her bedroom floor, packed her life into a backpack, and got on a one-way flight with just $200 in her pocket. She turned that $200 into over ten years of full-time travel. She went from budget backpacker to solo female travel expert — and now teaches thousands of women how to travel alone and make money from anywhere. The One-Way Ticket Plan reveals her decade’s worth of lessons, regrets, embarrassments, love stories, shortcuts, and problem-solving strategies — all packed into a hilarious page-turner and actionable plan for a total life makeover. From real-world advice on how travel can lower your cost of . . .

In the news –   PressRelease — Wayne J. Arendt, PhD, has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who’s Who. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process. For nearly half a century, Dr. Arendt has been a prominent figure in ornithology. His field research commenced in California, following a three-year tenure in the US Army (1966-1969), which included two years in Alaska as a 4.2 mortarman and Battalion mail clerk, and one year as a military policeman at Ft. Carson’s maximum-security stockade. In 1975, he investigated the life-history of the California Thrasher and its adaption to mesquite cover in the Anza Borrego Desert. Subsequently, he joined the Peace Corps (1976-78) serving in the Dominican Republic under the . . .

  The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65)   The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration, by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65), is a hybrid memoir/biography. It encompasses Mueller’s own story, beginning at her birth to Caucasian parents in the Tule Lake Japanese American High-Security Camp in Northern California, and tells the tale of her long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer who was incarcerated in the Minidoka Japanese American Camp in Idaho during WWII. The two met by chance in 1994. By then, Mueller was a published author, and Mary Mon Toy, by necessity of old age, had retired from an unusually successful career on stage and television, for an Asian American actor of her time. After Ms. Mon Toy’s death, Mueller penned the previously . . .

  WASHINGTON, DC— AmeriCorps and Peace Corps awarded the first Harris Wofford Joint Service Award to more than 200 individuals in Houston, Texas at the annual Points of Light Conference. Honoring the legacy of the late Senator Harris Wofford, who helped establish both the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, the award recognizes individuals who have already chosen to serve their country at home and abroad through both programs, as well as the thousands more who make that same commitment in the future. WATCH: Harris Wofford Award Ceremony “As we commemorate the inaugural Harris Wofford Joint Service Awards, I am proud and grateful for the more than 200 changemakers who have served their country at home and abroad through AmeriCorps and Peace Corps” said Michael D. Smith, AmeriCorps CEO. “These awards serve as a call to action in remembrance of Harris Wofford’s remarkable life and legacy, to find ways big and small to give . . .

  Silent Light by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) OB Books June 2024 340 pages $18.95 (paperback)   At the start of Mark Jacob’s remarkable new novel ― his first book in thirteen years ― thirty-seven-year-old Smith wins a “stash” of diamonds in a poker game. The only catch: he has to find them. A Louisiana native, Smith is currently employed on an oil platform off the west coast of Africa, while the diamonds are somewhere in the immense, war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. But Smith’s grown tired of the platform and he hates the idea of wasting a full house. One last adventure, he tells himself, and then, diamonds or no diamonds, he’s heading home to Louisiana. In Kinshasa, Smith meets a young woman named Béatrice, who hails from a village on the other side of the country. But this village, she tells Smith, is where his diamonds are . . .

June 12, 2024 GBH • • •  Marco Werman, co-host of station GBH’s The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, has worked in journalism since he was a 16-year-old copy boy at the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C. After graduating from Duke University in 1984, he joined the Peace Corps and went to Togo and Burkina Faso. While in Africa, he started freelancing for the BBC World Service, where he produced Network Africa. He has worked all over the world, joining GBH in 1995 to start The World, which is now heard on 377 public radio stations nationwide — a record number for the program.    An interview with Marco What are you reading or listening to now? I read a lot of current affairs and global news — daily reporting from multiple sources to long-form magazine articles — so I’ve been lately creating space to read more fiction. That’s recently included American Spy by . . .