Peace Corps writers

Catherine Varchaver (HQ Staff & APCD  Kyrgyzstan 1993-97)  who is today the senior stewardship officer at World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. where she writes extensively about global conservation programs, is the granddaughter of John and Maxine Atherton, who helped shape the art and science of fly fishing over the decades. She has just edited a book by her grandmother entitled The Fly Fisher and the River that will be published by Skyhorse Publishing in the spring of 2016. It will be published as well as a companion reprint of John Atherton’s (Catherine’s grandfather) classic The Fly and the Fish. In her introduction to the book, Catherine writes of how she was given the unfinished memoir over fifteen years ago and last year, holding the rolled pages of the unfinished book, said, “I could hear my grandmother telling me, with her lilting laugh, that her dream was now in my hands.” While not a . . .

The May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine has an article entitled “Winners on Winning”  where they interview writers who won (and lost) literary contests in 2014. Among the handful of winning writers is our Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) for his 2014 Autumn House Press Fiction Award ($2,500) and publication of his most recent collection, Truth Poker. Mark, a professor of English at West Virginia University, (and directs their creative writing program,) has won more contest than most writers. Here’s a short list: 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award for The River of Lost Voices: Stories From Guatemala 2001 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award for Steal My Heart 2004 George Garrett Fiction Award for An American Affair 2004 ABZ Poetry Prize for The Other Language 2012 Gival Press Novel Award for Julia & Rodrigo 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize for his story collection, The Incurable 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award . . .

Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse by Stanley Meisler (PC Staff 1964-67) Palgrave MacMillan 202 pages 2015 $26.00 Reviewed by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) • Full disclosure: Stan Meisler is one of the Peace Corps figures I have liked and admired most.  As a clueless upstart in the old Peace Corps Program Evaluation Division starting in 1964, I was lucky enough to have had Stan as a co-evaluator on three excursions out to where the real Peace Corps was stumbling along.  (A significant subset of people at Washington headquarters thought of the far-flung Volunteers as unglamorous supernumeraries, a kind of mud-stained boys’ and girls’ auxiliary, and the truest soul of the Peace Corps was to be found after work at Chez Francois next door on Connecticut Avenue). Stan and I went once to India together and twice to Ethiopia — both plenty real — to try to figure out how . . .

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 . . .

Mark Wentling’s ((PCV Honduras 1967-69, 1970-73; PC Staff Togo, Gabon & Niger 1973-77)  Africa’s Heart was selected by the Indie Editors of Kirkus Reviews to be featured in their April, 2015 issue. His review is one of the 20 reviews in the Indie section of the 4/15 Kirkus Reviews magazine. The publication is sent to over 5,000 industry professionals (librarians, publishers, agents, etc.) Less than 10% of Indie reviews are chosen to be included in this publication. Below is the Kirkus Review of Africa’s Heart. Congratulations, Mark. Africa’s Heart The Journey Ends in Kansas Wentling, Mark Peace Corps Writers (532 pp.) $20.00 paper | $8.99 e-book Jan. 15, 2015 978-1-935925-55-2 An ambitious novel concludes Wentling’s (Africa’s Release, 2014) African trilogy. Letivi, chief of the Ataku village, is faced with a modern dilemma: wealth disparity is growing in the village between those families who have sent children to work in Europe (who . . .

This is the first of a series of four essays on writers from the Peace Corps that will appear in World View magazine. WorldView ∙ Spring 2015 ∙ National Peace Corps Association BOOK LOCKER WRITERS FROM THE PEACE CORPS An unheralded literary movement By John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) One of the most important books of the late 1950s was The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. The book’s hero was a skilled technician committed to helping at a grassroots level by building water pumps, digging roads, building bridges. He was called the “ugly American” only because of his grotesque physical appearance. He lived and worked with the local people and, by the end of the novel, was beloved and admired by them. The bitter message of the novel, however, was that American diplomats were, by and large, neither competent nor effective; and the implication was that the . . .

  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 . . .

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. • My Life as a Pencil by Ron Arias (Peru 1963-64) Red Bird Chapbooks 2015 47 pages $12.00 (paperback) • Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope by Eileen Flanagan (Botswana 1984-86) She Writes Press March  2015 200 pages $16.95 (paperback), $9.95 (Kindle) • Of Mouse and Magic (Children) by Allan R. Gall (Turkey 1962–64) Two Harbors Press 278 pages 2011 $12.95 (paperback) • Fragments of the Corps: A Peace Corps Memoir by John Greven (Colombia 1964–68) CreateSpace 2014 258 pages $11.95 (paperback), $4.89 (Kindle) • One Degree South (Peace Corps novel) by Stephen L Snook (Gabon 1980–81; . . .

For a couple of decades before World War II, a group of immigrant painters and sculptors, including Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and Jules Pascin dominated the new art scene of Montparnasse in Paris. Art critics gave them the name “the School of Paris” to set them apart from the French-born (and less talented) young artists of the period. Modigliani and Chagall eventually attained enormous worldwide popularity, but in those earlier days most School of Paris painters looked on Soutine as their most talented contemporary. Willem de Kooning proclaimed Soutine his favorite painter, and Jackson Pollack hailed him as a major influence. Soutine arrived in Paris while many painters were experimenting with cubism, but he had no time for trends and fashions; like his art, Soutine was intense, demonic, and fierce. After the defeat of France by Hitler’s Germany, the East European Jewish immigrants who had made their way . . .

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 130 writers’ conferences and centers. Their mission is to foster literary achievement, advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing. This article on Peace Corps writers by John Coyne appears in their March 2015 on-line publication. Writers from the Peace Corps by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) Since 1961, Peace Corps writers have used their volunteer service as source material for their fiction and nonfiction. These writers have also found that the overseas experience has helped them find jobs once they returned home. Approximately 250,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps. Of these volunteers and staff, more than 1,500 have published memoirs, novels, and poetry inspired by their experience. Many former . . .