John Coyne – Page 243 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) Novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Aug 21 2013

Twenty years in the writing, we now have Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, that spans five decades and three continents back-dropped by different wars. It is, his publisher, Grove Atlantic says, “his magnum opus.” They (the publisher) writes:”Shacochis builds a complex and disturbing story about America’s coming of age in a pre-9/11 world.” Shacochis, one of the RPCV’s finest writers, reaches “deeper, drawing on his extensive first hand experience as a war correspondent to illuminate the simmering political, cultural, and historical global struggle through riveting and richly layered fiction, presenting an intimate portrait of the catastrophic events that led up to the war on terror and the America we have become.” Bob will be reading and signing books as a series of book stores, colleges, and other sites in the coming months. I’ll try to keep you alerted. So to begin. In early . . .

New Novel by Kent Haruf (Turkey 1965-67)

Aug 21 2013

Benediction, a new new novel by Kent Haruf, was published in March and I missed the pub date. Here is some information on the book. Benediction By Kent Haruf (Turkey 1965–67) Knopf $25.95 (hardcover), $15.00 (paperback), $12.99 (Kindle) 272 pages 2013 An Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2013: Kent Haruf writes about small towns and regular people, but don’t underestimate his ambition. He is writing about life, and to do that he has returned again and again–first with Plainsong, later with Eventide–to the small town of Holt, located on the eastern plains of Colorado. In Benediction, Haruf introduces us to Dad Lewis, a 77-year-old hardware store owner who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The experience of reading Haruf is a slow burn, but as we meet the people who gather around Dad Lewis in his final days we begin to see that this is a book . . .

Talking with Susan Kramer O’Neill about CALLING NEW DELHI FOR FREE

Aug 20 2013

John Coyne interviews Susan O’Neill about her new collection of essays Calling New Delhi for Free (and other ephemeral truths of the 21st century) that has just been published by Peace Corps Writers. • Susan, let’s begin with some basic stuff: what is your educational background? I earned an RN at a now-defunct three-year nursing school, Holy Cross School of Nursing, in South Bend, IN. I signed up for the Army while I was a student, so I could help my parents pay the bill with my monthly Army stipend, and afterward, the Army trained me in the Operating Room specialty. Then they sent me to Vietnam (the basis for my short story collection, Don’t Mean Nothing). After that I amassed a degree in Journalism, over 10 years, graduating at last in 1984 from at the U of Maine at Orono. o Where did you serve as a PCV? I . . .

Call for Submissions from New Madrid, Winter 2014 Issue: The Great Hunger

Aug 20 2013

New Madrid is the national journal of the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University. It takes its name from the New Madrid seismic zone, which falls within the central Mississippi Valley and extends through western Kentucky. Between 1811 and 1812, four earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 7.0 struck this region, changing the course of the Mississippi River, creating Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee and ringing church bells as far away as Boston. The editor of the New Madrid Journal is Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79). Ann is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the author of the book Easter Vigil, which earned the Anhinga Prize for Poetry and our RPCV Writers and Readers Award. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow as well as a Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. She is also the winner of an Al Smith Fellowship from the . . .

Review of Lauri Anderson's (Nigeria 1965-67) From Moosehead to Misery Bay

Aug 19 2013

From Moosehead to Misery Bay: or The Moose in the VW Bug by Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1965–67) North Star Press $14.00 224 pages June 2013 Reviewed by Don Schlenger (Ethiopia 1966-68) FROM MOOSEHEAD TO MISERY BAY is a wonderful collection of tales both tall and, according to the author, mostly true. They recount his childhood and adolescence growing up in northern Maine at the southern edge of the great northern forest; his young adulthood overseas as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nigeria and later as a teacher in Micronesia and Turkey; and his life in academe at a small Finnish-American college in the upper peninsula of Michigan. There is very little of what could be called “mainstream” about the life Anderson describes, which makes the book all the more compelling and enjoyable, and there are more than a few “Are you KIDDING?” moments as well. Here are a few: Local . . .

Talking with Jason Gray (Gabon 2002-04) about Glimpses through the Forest

Aug 19 2013

Jason, tell us a little about yourself, pre-Peace Corps. Well, I grew up on the windswept plains and in the high mountains of Montana, in a town on the Missouri River called Great Falls. Most weekends, my family would seek out some outdoor adventure, whether it be fishing, or hiking, or skiing, or mending fences for the horses we raised. I developed the travel bug early on as well, and have enjoyed visiting many natural areas in the United States and abroad. My formative education years were spent studying French, ecology, and conservation biology, which lead me to study abroad programs in Paris, France and in Kenya. Upon graduation from college, I knew I had to go back to Africa and I jumped at the chance to serve in the Peace Corps. Gabon proved such a remarkable place that I stayed on after my Peace Corps service with WWF International, . . .

Eye on the Sixties on C-Span This Sunday

Aug 16 2013

This Sunday, March 18, 2013, Rowland Scherman (PC/HQ 1961-63), the focus of the film Eye on the Sixties, will be featured, with the film’s producer and director Chris Szwedo, at a Forum at the JFK Library that will be shown live on C-Span. An 8-minute clip of “The March” from the film will also be aired. The Forum at the Kennedy Library is from 1-5 on Sunday, August 18, 2013. Check it out!

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) Wins Southern Illinois Literary Award

Aug 16 2013

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) has won the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Awards for Prose presented by the Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Grassroots, SIUC’s undergraduate literary magazine. Mark won for his 2012 collection of stories, The Incurables (University of Notre Dame Press). Mark receives an honorarium of $1000, and will present a public reading and participate in panels at the Devil’s Kitchen Fall Literary Festival at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. The dates for the 2013 festival are October 16–18, 2013. Judges come from the faculty of SIUC’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and the award winners were selected by the staff of GRASSROOTS, SIUC’s undergraduate literary magazine. Mark directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing in the Department of English at West Virginia University. He is the author of An American Affair, winner of the 2004 George Garrett Prize for fiction, as well as . . .

Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) Posted on New Yorker Website

Aug 16 2013

AUGUST 15, 2013 EGYPT CROSSES THE LINE POSTED BY PETER HESSLER Why now? This is the question most of us ask, looking at Egypt from afar. For nearly a month and a half, ever since the military removed President Mohamed Morsi from office, the authorities allowed his supporters to stage an extended and peaceful sit-in at two sites in Cairo. But early on Wednesday morning police suddenly attacked both sites, destroying camps and forcibly removing demonstrators, and triggering violence across the country. Nearly three hundred people have reportedly been killed, mostly supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Among the dead is Asmaa al-Beltagy, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Mohamed al-Beltagy, one of the leaders of the Brotherhood. Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s vice-president for foreign affairs, has resigned in protest. ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, has been a key source of international legitimacy for the government. For weeks, ElBaradei and foreign . . .

Tony D'Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) ) on Short List for $50,000 Literary Prize

Aug 15 2013

Jurors for the $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Prize have narrowed the more than 170 submissions down to a short list of five novels competing for the biannual award, one of the richest in the United States. The books and authors are: Carry the One (Simon & Schuster), by Carol Anshaw The Middlesteins (Grand Central Publishing), by Jami Attenberg Mule (Mariner Books), by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) The Right-Hand Shore (Picador), by Christopher Tilghman Dirt (Harper Perennial), by David Vann The winner will be announced at the opening gala for the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 21. “It’s a prize that has no parallel really among existing literary prizes and comes at a perfect time in a writer’s career,” said Jonathan Dee, a member of the jury and winner of the second Literary Prize for his novel, The Privileges. “There’s a lot of attention when you make your debut. . . .

Self-Published Books Wins PEN Award

Aug 15 2013

The novel A Naked Singularity written, and self-published, by a Manhattan public defender in 2008 has just won the $25,000 W. Bingham Prize given by PEN. The book had been rejected by mainstream publishers before being self-published, and then four years later republished by the academic press of the University of Chicago. So, perhaps, there is hope for all of us who self-publish. The plot of A Naked Singularity is this: It tells the story of Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender–one who, tellingly has never lost a trial. Never. In the book, we watch what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack–and how his world then slowly devolves. It’s a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it’s told in . . .

Shriver Stories: Sarge in Turkey after the death of JFK

Aug 14 2013

[This story came to me from Sarah Seybold (aka Sally O’Connell (Turkey 1963-65)] An orange hard cover book with Sarge’s picture sits on my mother’s coffee table. It’s been there since 1965. Sargent Shriver: A Candid Portrait by Robert Liston has a bookmark on page 120. That’s the black and white photo section which features Sarge on a raft in North Borneo, Sarge sharing bread in an Iranian bakery, Sarge visiting with the Shah of Iran, and Sarge at my Peace Corps site in a hospital in eastern Turkey. I am dressed in white, with starched cap, pale hose and polished nurse’s shoes. Sarge is tall and athletic looking, with cropped hair and a ruddy face. He wears slacks and a bulky ribbed cardigan frayed around a small hole on the left shoulder. Scuffed boots warm his feet. In the background, temperature charts hang over white metal cribs in a . . .

Travel Smart Article on The Peace Corps

Aug 12 2013

Travel Smart, a monthly newsletter that Money Magazine calls “Best newsletter for travelers on a budget” has a piece entitled “Yes Virginia, There Is Still A Peace Corps” in their August 15, 2013 issue. Check out the publication, if only because I wrote the piece on ‘today’s Peace Corps’. This small publication, TravelSmart, is jammed with traval information, current facts, and what is happening around the world. In the current issue, besides the Peace Corps article, there is information on the Top Ten Travel Deals, information on the USA’s Global Entry program, Postcards From Germany, a detail report on Denver (Part II), how to travel to Cuba, legally, riding the rails in Great Britain, plus tips on travel gizmons, gadgets & gear. And a lead story on “Smart Cards’ how in the rest of the world ‘chip and PIN’ technology has become standard, and the US card companies haven’t yet . . .

Nominate Your Favorite Book Published by an RPCV in 2012

Aug 12 2013

It is time to nominate your favorite Peace Corps book published in 2012 for the Peace Corps Writers annual awards. Make your nomination(s) in the comment section following this announcement so people can see what books have been recognized. You may nominate your own book; books written by friends; books written by total strangers. The books can be about the Peace Corps or on any topic. The books must have been published in 2012. The awards will be announced in August. Thank you for nominating your favorite book written by a PCV, RPCV or Peace Corps Staff. A framed certificate and money are given to the winners. Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award First given in 1990, the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador. Cowan wrote The Making of An Un-American about his experiences as a Volunteer in Latin America in the sixties. . . .

Review of S.A. Bodeen's (Tanzania 1989-91) The Fallout

Aug 09 2013

The Fallout by S.A. Bodeen (Tanzania 1989–90) Feiwel and Friends $16.99 (hard cover); $8.89 (Kindle) 336 pages September 2013 Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996–98) SPOILER ALERT! The Fallout is the sequel to The Compound. If you haven’t read The Compound and intend to, you really shouldn’t read this review. It’s hard to talk about anything in The Fallout that wouldn’t spoil at least some of The Compound. Ok — I warned you. Seriously — I “oh-so-totally-frickin’” warned you. Ok – so I really wanted to say oh-so-totally-frickin’ because it’s cool and because I can legitimately put it into this review since it’s a direct quote from the book. Yep. This young adult book was a lot of fun to get into, and definitely a page-turner. This combination of suspense, survival, and teenage angst makes for a great read. I’m spoiling The Compound for you now. This is officially your . . .

Author - John Coyne