CALLING ALL RPCV WRITERS

Calling all

RPCV Writers

Are you writing a memoir, poems, short stories or a scholarly essay? Whether it is about the Peace Corps or not, you are invited to the first Peace Corps Writers Workshop this September.  Have your work reviewed in a very supportive setting, and learn about agents, submissions, and  publication.

The workshop–only open to 15 RPCVs–will be held from Wednesday, September 18th to Saturday, September 21rd at Shore Retreats on Broad Creek, on the fabulous Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. Costs range from $100 – $500 and includes shared living quarters, and most meals. If interested contact John Coyne at: jcoyneone@gmail.com

As of this week, only four more writers will be accepted. 

This workshop is organized by Peace Corps Worldwide and it will be lead by these published RPCV writers.

Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp. She is the author of three novels: Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother’s Island. She is a recipient of an American Book Award, the Maria Thomas Award for Outstanding Fiction, Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, New York Public Library Best Books for the Teenage, a New York Times Book Review New and Noteworthy in Paperback, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” choice. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She is currently at work on a hybrid memoir/biography about her friendship with a Nisei showgirl who was incarcerated during WWII.

Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) is an emeritus professor at William Paterson University and frequently lectures on issues in special education. She has published two prize-winning books and numerous journal articles. The Last Camel won the Paul Cowan prize for non-fiction. Desert Dawn, with Waris Dirie, has been translated into over twenty languages and was on the best seller list in Germany for over a year.  It was awarded the Corine prize for non-fiction. Her most recent book is Inclusion: The Dream and the Reality inside Special Education.

Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) is the author of História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands that won the 2014 Peace Corps Writers Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award. She is also the author of three books of poetry, The Imaginal Marriage, Bartram’s Garden, and The Book of Sleep, all from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and many others. She won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for 2019, and was a 2014/2016 Fulbright fellow to Brazil, where she researched and wrote about traditional midwifery. She lives in the Philadelphia area.

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) is the author of eight books, including The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and Julia & Rodrigo, winner of the 2012 Gival Press Novel Award. His latest book, The Rink Girl: Stories, won the 2018 Prize Americana (Hollywood Books). He wrote the script for the award-winning Peace Corps film How Far Are You Willing to Go to Make a Difference? He is a professor of English at West Virginia University.

John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) edited the first collection of travel essays written by RPCVs,  Going Up Country (Scribner’s 1994). In 1999 he published a collection of short stories by Peace Corps writers  Living on the Edge. He also created three paperback books of essays published by the Peace Corps: To Touch the World (1995); At Home in the World (1996); The Great Adventure (1997).  Today he is an adjunct professor in the MFA Creative Writing program of National University of California.

Peace Corps Worldwide celebrates the Peace Corps experience by publishing stories from around the world by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), and Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), to share with all who have a desire for international understanding.

This effort is at the heart of the Third Goal of the Peace Corps — to “bring the world back home.” Publicizing the writings of  RPCVs and PCVs, all their novels, short stories, essays and poetry is a positive way of educating Americans about the world, an essential Peace Corps Third Goal activity to provide a link between the cultures of the world and our culture.

Contact  John Coyne at:jcoyneone@gmail.com

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