Author - Marian Haley Beil

Peace Corps Worldwide will be there in the guise of Peace Corps Writers. John and I are presenting two programs: “Peace Corps Memoirists Talk about Their Writing” Friday, June 5, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Unit 1 Dormitory Quad – APR (All Purpose Room) The panelists will be: Suzanne Adam, author of Marrying Santiago (Colombia 1964–66) Kay Gillies Dixon, author of Wanderlust Satisfied (Colombia 1962–64) Catherine Onyemelukwe, author of My Life and Loves Abroad (Nigeria 1962–64) Angene Wilson, author of Africa on My Mind: Educating Americans for Fifty Years (1962–64) Writing Your Peace Corps Memoir and Preparing Your Manuscript for Publication Saturday, June 6 – 9 AM– 10 AM Unit 1 – Deutsch John will talk writing; Marian, making your book a reality. Pre-conference social gathering We hope that all Peace Corps writers attending the conference will join us at FreeHouse, in Berkeley Thursday evening, June 4th from 7:30pm – . . .

Nigeria Revisited: My Life and Loves Abroad Catherine Onyemelukwe (Nigeria 1962–64) Peace Corps Writers October 2014 314 pages $14.62 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Marianne Arieux (Ethiopia 1965–67) • It is 1969. Former Peace Corps Volunteer and American Midwesterner, now Nigerian wife and mother, Catharine Onyemeluke nests with her family in her in-laws remote Igbo village, fleeing the encroaching Biafran war. For the first time since coming to Africa, she must become part of a rural African village without electricity, running water, or a health facility nearby; an undertaking that is a hallmark of Peace Corps training. Onyemelukwe’s telling of this particular venture highlights her achievement in this well written memoir — a tale of a young woman whose adventurous spirit carries her into a life path introduced and limned by the Peace Corps and its lore. Her book has the tone of a life-cycle epic. We are invited on . . .

A Writer Writes — Breaking Bread with Lindsay Lohan and Obama by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) • It was Lindsay Lohan’s attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw drew the line. Not at Ozzy Osbourne, Paula Jones, Larry Flint, Donald Trump or, Lord have mercy on us, Kim Kardashian. “The breaking point for me was Lindsay Lohan. She became a big star at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Give me a break,” Brokaw said after the 2013 dinner. “There was more dignity at my daughter’s junior prom than there is [at] what I’m seeing on C-SPAN there.” That may be an unfair comparison. Junior proms set a rather high bar. But cut Lindsay some slack. She may have been better behaved than the room full of liquored-up hacks. Her host, Greta van Susteren, who spins right-wing fables for Fox News, said: “The table . . .

Bartram’s Garden by Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998–2000) Carnegie Mellon University Press February 2015 82 pages $15.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978–79) • As luck and timing would have it, I come to Eleanor Stanford’s Bartram’s Garden just as a seemingly infinite number of Brood XXIII cicadas have emerged from their hidey holes in western Kentucky. I can’t imagine a better book to read to the accompaniment of the music of the spheres, as I keep calling the rattling surround sound produced in the resonant abdomens of the male cicadas clinging to the leaves of every tree, bush, and flower in our neighborhood. The last time I heard it — exactly thirteen years ago, in accordance with the periodicity of Brood XXIII — my children, who are now both almost out of the teenage years, were the same age as Stanford’s young children. If the home is a . . .

Neighborhood Dogs by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965-67) • POODLES, I THINK, were bred to be work dogs, although I’m uncertain what work they did. They were not intended to be primped, pampered and coiffed to within an inch of their dog lives, trimmed of most hair except for little puffs at their paws, rumps, shoulders and tails, and minced around at dog-shows like some foppish dandy at the French royal court. That’s no way to treat a dog. Adding insult to injury, recently I saw a tricked-out poodle in the neighborhood whose owner (and surely it wasn’t the dog’s decision), dyed each of those puffs of hair orange shading into purple. I was tempted to round on him (the owner, not the dog), accuse him of animal cruelty (or at least deep humiliation), and call the animal control agency and have the dog taken away. I didn’t, of course. The . . .

Je suis Charlie. Je suis ne pas Charlie Hebdo. by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) • Until the massacre of the writers and cartoonist at the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, I had never seen the publication, nor was I familiar with its brand of outrageous satire. Adam Gopnik wrote in the Jan. 19 issue of The New Yorker: They worked instead in a peculiarly French and savage tradition, forged in a long nineteenth-century guerrilla war between republicans and the Church and the monarchy . . .. Charlie Hebdo was — will be again, let us hope — a satirical journal of a kind these days found in France almost alone . . .. The coarser and more scabrous cartoons that marked the covers of Charlie Hebdo — and took in Jesus and Moses, along with Muhammad; angry rabbis and ranting bishops, along with imams — were the latest example of that tradition.” The magazine was . . .

John Sherman (Nigeria 1966–66, Malawi 1967–68) and Chi Sherman have just published a collaborative, spoken-word CD — Shades: Writings on Race Culture Gender. The CD has 25 tracks of poetry and prose, with original music by Gabriel Harley. There will be a release party for the CD at Indy Reads Books 911 Massachusetts Avenue, Indianapolis IN on Saturday, May 9. For more information and to order the CD, write John at john@mesaverdepress.com

The Rumor Project by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) . I Time was, rumors and gossip were neighborhood affairs, exchanged over back-yard fences, in cafes and taverns, doctors’ waiting rooms, barber shops and chance meetings on the street. Neighbors informed or misinformed neighbors, hearsay was the general rule, (“I heard from a friend who has friend who said . . . ”), lies were sworn by, people may have been slandered and there was occasional hate speech. But it was a trickle of talk in cities and towns across the U.S. — with a relatively limited number of actors and limited reach — before the Internet provided a conduit for a tsunami of rumors, gossip, lies, misinformation (“It must be true because I saw it on the Internet.”), and hate speech that echoes around the world. Nevertheless, during World War II this trickle of talk in thousands of places was sufficiently worrisome for . . .

  In June Philip Brady (Zaire 1980–82) will publish his verse memoir, To Banquet with the Ethiopians: A Memoir of Life Before the Alphabet, with Broadstone Books. The publishing sheet describes the book thus: Poised between myth and time, this unique verse memoir blends Homer’s discovery of the alphabet with a man’s recovery from near death and a boy’s struggle to see the adult world through the prism of an ancient epic. Brady is the author of three collections of poetry — Fathom, (Word Press, 2007); Weal (winner of the 1999 Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press); and Forged Correspondences, (New Myths, 1996) chosen for Ploughshares’ “Editors’ Shelf” by Maxine Kumin. His essay collection is By Heart: Reflections of a Rust-Belt Bard (University of Tennessee Press, 2008). A memoir, To Prove My Blood: A Tale of Emigrations & The Afterlife, was published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2003. He co‑edited, . . .

Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet edited by Glifford Garstang (Korea 1976–77); contributors include: Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04), Jennifer Lucy Martin (Chad 1996-98) and Susi Wyss (Central African Republic 1990–92) Press 53 September 2014 234 pages $19.95 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 76-78) • THERE’S SOMETHING POST-APOCALYPTIC about the twenty dark tales RPCV Clifford Garstang has gathered from around the world in this new short story collection, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet. If fiction is what tells us the real truth, these authors and Garstang, who has worked extensively internationally and thus could be said to be “a man of the world,” are delivering some hard news. Humanity’s dissolution into an entropy of violence and perils to the body and spirit are backdrop, foreground and theme. The worlds of these stories are unrelenting in their helplessness, almost casual cruelties, ignorance and silence . . .

From the NPCA: Early bird registration for Peace Corps Connect/Berkeley ends tomorrow! Join us June 5-6, 2015 for this annual event showcasing our community’s lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet and other prominent leaders among the Peace Corps community. Click the link on this page to see the full program. You will be inspired and motivated. Peace Corps Connect/Berkeley will provide an opportunity for you to engage with your fellow RPCVs and former Peace Corps staff who share the formative foundation of the Peace Corps experience. . Peace Corps Writers at Peace Corps Connect/Berkeley Peace Corps Writers will present two programs during PC Connect. 1) Noted writer John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) will talk about writing your Peace Corps memoir, and editor and book designer Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962–64) will discuss preparing your manuscript for publishing. 2)  There . . .

A Writer Writes — Death of a Politician by Gerald Karey (Turkey 1965–67) • Tom Schweich, Missouri auditor and Republican candidate for governor, died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound last month. Schweich said he was being subjected to an anti-Semitic whispering campaign. He believed that John Hancock, a GOP consultant who was elected February 21st as chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, was telling Republican donors and activists that Schweich was Jewish. Schweich was an Episcopalian and did have a Jewish grandfather. But in Judaism, the religion is passed down through the mother’s line, not the father’s. As far as the Orthodox rabbis are concerned, and by choice, Schweich was not Jewish. But is saying someone is Jewish or a Jew anti-Semitic? Not necessarily if you don’t precede it with any number of ugly adjectives, or if you don’t use it as an epithet. I’m okay if you say . . .

Lily of Peru by David C. Edmonds (Peru 1963–65) A Peace Corps Writers Book January 2015 402 pages $16.95 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Geraldine Kennedy (Liberia 1962–64) • Peru in 1992 is besieged by the sinister evils of President Fujimura’s not-so-secret police and military, and the equally brutal atrocities of the guerilla terrorists, Shining Path. Throughout Andean villages, monuments to long-ago battles and massacres — one loss after another — display the centuries of resentment descendants of the Incas bear toward the descendants of Pizzaro and his conquistadors. The ancient is very much a part of the present. Multiple bad guys fight each other, trampling the innocent and poor with abandon. Into this violent mix, under the pretext of attending an academic conference, Professor Mark Thorsen travels to Lima for a secret rendezvous with an old love. Mark and Marisa met in Peru ten years before when he was . . .

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (Turkey 1965–67) Knopf May 2015 192 pages $24.00 (hardcover), $9.99 (Kindle), $25.00 (audio CD) Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–02, Madagascar 2002–03) • KENT HARUF DIED IN November at age 71; he achieved what most writers hope to, but nearly none will: he wrote beautiful, engaging, readable literary novels. Though he never realized the copious output or mass audience of the genre types, he was far superior a writer. In terms of the contemporary novel, very few could call him a peer; the short list might include Cormac McCarthy and Alice Munro. Among Peace Corps alumni literary writers, Haruf was arguably our best. His passing was noted widely in literary circles and the national press, and his achievements were commended by Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where Haruf set his books. Haruf’s short novel, Our Souls at Night, releasing posthumously in May, . . .