Peace Corps writers

After finishing writing his last novel, Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) spent a year as a free lance journalist in St. Louis and Sarasota and racked up a series of awards and recognition for his journalism. Among them were…. National Association of Black Journalists Award for Investigative Reporting (co-award with Tom Finkel) for a 8000 word feature “Plenty of Guilt to Go Around” in Riverfront Times about a murky 1982 St. Louis murder and the African American man still in prison for it despite jury stacking in the early 80s’ racially biased, pro-death penalty courts under John Ashcroft. Florida Magazine Association First Place “Charlie” Award for Investigative Reporting for his 6000 word feature “Eyes Wide Shut” in Sarasota Magazine that uncovered new evidence in the $360 million Art Nadel “Mini-Madoff” Ponzi Scheme. Florida Magazine Association Second Place Feature Writing for the same story. Florida Magazine Association Third Place . . .

Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet Call for submissions! In the 21st Century, knowledge of the world around us grows increasingly important, and fiction set in other countries has become extremely popular. Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Edited by Clifford Garstang, to be published by Press 53 in Fall 2014) is an anthology (and potential series) of short fiction (short stories of any length, short shorts, and flash) set around the globe, including the United States. The anthology will consist of 20-25 fictions, with no more than one story set in any one country. Included stories will be a mix of previously published and new work. Each contributor will be entitled to a contributor copy and author discounts on additional copies. Deadline is December 31, 2013 Rights and Terms: Author verifies that the story submitted is original and is not prohibited from publication by Press 53 . . .

The Liberia One Storybook The First Peace Corps Volunteers to Liberia Tell Their Stories Edited by Geraldine Kennedy (1962-64) Clover Park Press, $22 114 pages 2012 Reviewed by Casey Frazee (South Africa, 2009) Those interested in far-off places will relish in the rich descriptions of life in the Liberia of the mid-1900s, before the late 20th century civil war broke out and closed the Peace Corps program there for nearly 20 years. Volunteers who served in Liberia in the pioneering group are lucky to have a formalized account of their time spent learning how to speak, cook, and live like their West African counterparts. A small, fertile country situated on the western coast of Africa, curving southeast along the Atlantic Ocean, Liberia is a country with a rich, tumultuous history. The country was founded by freed black American slaves in the early 19th century. That history of liberation, optimism and . . .

According to People Magazine in a recent review, Thurston Clarke’s (Tunisia 1968) new book, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, makes the case that JFK, who had just lost his infant son, was on the verge of vast achievement before his assassination. Thurston’s book is a minute-by-minute account of JFK’s last hundred days that asks what might have been. Kennedy’s last hundred days began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick Kennedy, and during this time, the president made strides in the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, and his personal life. While Jackie was recuperating, the premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment. Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss of his son convinced Kennedy to work harder as a husband and father, and there is ample evidence that he suspended his notorious philandering during these last months of . . .

The Book of Jotham by Arthur Powers (Brazil 1969-73) 2012 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction – Novella Tuscany Press, $16.95 64 pages 2013 Reviewed by M. Susan Hundt-Bergan (Ethiopia 1966-68) A favorite Catholic prayer invoking the intercession of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, includes the words, “we…poor banished children of Eve…mourning and weeping in this vale of tears…” Jesus focused his ministry on those heavily weighed down by the burdens of life, those who mourn and weep in this vale of tears. In the Gospel stories we see Jesus encountering and embracing lepers, cripples, prostitutes, tax cheats, demoniacs, beggars, blind men, and heartbroken widows – those at the bottom and fringes of society of his times. And one could add women and children to that list. The main character in Arthur Powers’ small and beautiful work, The Book of Jotham, adds a new face to those we meet in the . . .

The book jacket copy on Subtle Bodies reads: In his long-awaited new novel, Norman Rush, author of three immensely praised books set in Africa, including the best-selling classic and National Book Award-winner Mating, returns home, giving us a sophisticated, often comical, romp through the particular joys and tribulations of marriage, and the dilemmas of friendship, as a group of college friends reunites in upstate New York twenty-some years after graduation. When Douglas, the ringleader of a clique of self-styled wits of “superior sensibility” dies suddenly, his four remaining friends are summoned to his luxe estate high in the Catskills to memorialize his life and mourn his passing. Responding to an obscure sense of emergency in the call, Ned, our hero, flies in from San Francisco (where he is the main organizer of a march against the impending Iraq war), pursued instantly by his furious wife, Nina: they’re at a critical point in . . .

Susan O’Neill is the author of Don’t Mean Nothing (Ballantine 2001; UMass Press 2004; Serving House Books 2010), a collection of short stories based loosely on her hitch as an Army Nurse in Viet Nam. She has edited Vestal Review , an ezine/print literary journal for flash fiction, since it began, literally at the turn of the century. Her stories and essays have appeared on line and in print, in commercial and literary magazines, professional journals, Spoken Word zines and, in the Old Days, in real newsprint. She has worked as a reporter, a freelance writer, an RN, a storyteller, an envelope-stuffer, and a wedding singer. Susan’s more-or-less monthly essays, under the heading Off the Matrix, can be found on this site at PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org/off-the-matrix, and she wastes a shameful amount of time on Facebook and Twitter (@oneill_susan). Susan’s new book — Calling New Dehli for Free (and other ephemeral truths . . .

Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) sent in the following note on what is happening with Peace Corps books: File sharing has been in the news for many years, usually about pirated movies and music. The result was a new governmental investigative team called the Internet Crime Claim Center (IC3) and a formatted complaint form to warn computer pirates to cease and desist (see DMCA Notice). Books can also be shared. If you have a copyrighted book and wish to give it away, file sharing might be a valuable tool. However, if you sell your book, you might unexpectedly find others giving it away. Recently three of five of my Peace Corps books were offered for free downloads without my permission. The site had no listed address or name of a contact person. According to a web search, the host was a company worth more than four million dollars, without an . . .

Staff writer for The New Yorker George Packer (Togo 1982-84) who in May published The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which was reviewed recently on the site, has a comment on page 21 of the July 22, 2013, issue. Packer writes about the double standards of American foreign aid in the Middle East, given what is happening in Egypt. Meanwhile 0n the streets of Cairo is our own Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). Peter, who is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, also has a new book out this spring:  Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. Peter’s Letter From Cairo in on page 26 of the current issue and is entitled, “The Showdown: winners and losers in Egypt’s ongoing revolution.” Peter and his family live now in Cairo, only blocks from Tahrir Square, and his view of the military ‘coup’ is an eye-witness account from . . .

Jason Sanford is the author of a number of short stories, essays, and articles, and an active member of the SFWA. While he was born and raised in the American South, he currently live in the Midwestern U.S. with his wife and sons. His life’s adventures have included working as an archeologist and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand in the 1990s. He has published a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which devoted a special issue to his fiction in December 2010. His fiction has also been published in Year’s Best SF 14 , Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places. Among the awards and honors he has received include being a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novella, winning both the 2008 . . .

Connecting Two Worlds: An Environmental Journey from Peace Corps to Present By Anthony Simeone (Burkina Faso 1971-73) A Peace Corps Writers Book, $19.95 124 Pages 2013 Reviewed by Mike Tidwell (Democratic Republic of the Congo 1985-87) The cover of Anthony Simeone’s memorable but bumpy new book says it all. It shows photographs taken from outer space of Earth and Mars, side by side. One orb has a fertile blue-green hue, radiating the aura life. The other is dark-orange, shadowy, and lifeless. Simeone spends much of the next 124 pages of this short work explaining how environmental degradation inflicted by humans could push the lush green orb to one day more closely resemble the barren-orange orb. Simeone writes in the prologue that his book, Connecting Two Worlds, is also about the “contrast between my life and experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa and my life in the more . . .

An Apricot Year, New Mexico author Martha Egan’s newest novel, is scooping up a bumper crop of prizes this season. Last November the book won two NM/AZ Book Awards, one for Fiction and one for Design. In the last few weeks it has been the recipient of still more kudos. An Apricot Year also won Honorable Mention in the Novels category in the New Mexico Press Women’s 2013 Communications Awards. The Independent Publisher gave it a Bronze IPPY medal for Mountain West Regional Fiction during Book Expo in New York. This is the third of Ms. Egan’s fiction titles to win this prize. On June 28th, An Apricot Year won a Bronze ForeWord Book of the Year Award for Multicultural Fiction announced at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago. Set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, An Apricot Year follows a woman who leaves an . . .

Africa on My Mind: Living Peace Corps’ Third Goal by Angene Wilson (Liberia 1962–64) A Peace Corps Writers Book $10.00 210 pages February 2013 Reviewed by Julie R. Dargis (Morocco 1984–87) “Once upon a time, I planned to write a novel set in Liberia,” writes Angene Wilson in her recent book, Africa on my Mind. “I was not alone. A number of Peace Corps Volunteers have wanted to be novelists or at least writers of memoirs. My novel would feature Liberians, of course . . . I described Mother Mae . . .. She adjusted the knot of the lappa cloth she’d wrapped around her faded housedress. The lappa was bright blue and red . . .. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, her liquid brown eyes laughed and her voice was gently mocking, but her rather thin lips remained pressed together in a straight line . . ..” Wilson reached out to . . .

I’m told that the panel for writers & film makers at the NPCA Conference this weekend in Boston was well attended and much appreciated. As one person wrote me: “It was a great hour, the room was full. People were engaged. We had a good discussion among everyone there. Wonderful as always to be among Peace Corps people.” Thanks to the panel for making it happen, and thanks to the new head of the NPCA, Glenn Blumhorst, for asking PeaceCorpsWriters to be part of the program. Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963–65) has worked in films and television as a writer, producer and director for 40 years. He recently completed Waging Peace: The Peace Corps Experience, a documentary that weaves the letters, journals, emails and blogs written by Volunteers with the profiles of four former Volunteers who, in their work today, are still making a difference. • Will Siegel (Ethiopia 1962–64) taught secondary . . .