Peace Corps writers

The winner of the Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Writing in 2011 is Lawrence F. Lihosit (Hondurus 1975-77) for his Years On: And Other Travel Essays Lawrence F. Lihosit was born in the southern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois in 1951. His family later moved to Arizona where he graduated from grade school, high school and Arizona State University. He reluctantly served in the U.S. Army Reserves during the closing years of the Vietnam War and enthusiastically volunteered for the Peace Corps (Honduras, 1975-1977). His travels and work have taken him from the salmon spawning Nushagak River Basin in southwestern Alaska to the fertile Argentine Pampas. His continuing studies have included master’s coursework in urban planning at la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, art and creative writing at Skyline College in San Bruno, California and education at California State University Fresno. He earned his living as . . .

2011 Winner of the Poetry Award–Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002-04) author of Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Jeff Fearnside taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan from 2002 to 2004. After completing his service, he remained in Central Asia for another two years, marrying his Kazakhstani bride Valentina. Their courtship and his experiences in general while living overseas were explored in his chapbook Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Most of his work since Peace Corps has involved education in some way, from managing the Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to teaching at Western Kentucky University and Prescott College. As a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at WKU, he was nominated for a Faculty Award for Teaching, one of that institution’s highest . . .

Winner of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award (Memoir) for 2011 is Chris Honore’ (Colombia (1967-69) for his book Out in the All of It, published by iUniverse. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Chris Honore’ was born in occupied Denmark during WWII. His father was in the Danish resistance. His mother still remembers the day the Germans arrived and the day they left. After the war, they immigrated to America. Chris attended San Jose State University and then the University of California, at Berkeley, where he earned a teaching credential, an M.A. and a Ph.D. And then he joined the Peace Corps. Since then he has been a freelance journalist based in Ashland, Oregon. He is married and his wife owns a famous bookstore on Main Street in this charming town. Their son is a cinematographer and lives in Hollywood. . . .

Winner Of 2011 Maria Thomas Fiction Award–Susi Wyss (Central African Republic 1990-92) author of The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Susi Wyss book of fiction set across Africa that was largely inspired by her twenty-year career  managing international health programs. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central African Republic from 1990 to 1992, and currently works for Jhpiego, a Baltimore-based international health organization. She has one master’s degree in public health from Boston University, and another in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary magazines, and she has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and other arts organizations. The Civilized World:  A Novel in Stories by Susi Wyss (Central African Republic, 1990-92) Henry Holt and Company $15.00 226 pages March, . . .

Winner of the 2011 Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award is Kevin G. Lowther (Sierra Leone 1963-65) author of The African-American Odyssey of John Kizell: A South Carolina Slave Returned to Fight the Slave Trade in His African Homeland. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Kevin Lowther served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone (1963–65), teaching African and world history at West Africa’s oldest secondary school in Freetown. He spent the next six years with the Peace Corps in various capacities: trainer, campus recruiter, public information officer (in charge of a news service targeted at college students), desk officer for programs in Southern Africa and manager of an office to support volunteerism among former PCVs. He also was in charge of Volunteers to America — the “reverse” Peace Corps program-during its final year of operation. In 1971, Lowther worked with C. Payne . . .

Studio Hyperset did a 82-minute film of the RPCV writers’ panel discussion organized earlier this year by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967–69) Associate Director of the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas that included Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963–65), Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67), Peter Hessler (China 1996–98) and Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65). Marnie was the monitor. She is the author of Green Fires: A Novel of the Ecuadorian Rainforest that won the Maria Thomas Award for Fiction and an American Book Award. The Climate of the Country, her second novel, is set in the Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp, where she was born. My Mother’s Island, which takes place in Puerto Rico, was a BookSense 76 selection and is currently under option for a feature film. An essay of Marnies is in the forthcoming anthology, That Mad Game: Growing up in a War Zone. She is at work on a . . .

The New York Times has a great article today (August 16,2012) on “The Joys and Hazards of Self-Publishing on the Web” written by Alan Finder. Here’s one quote: “The single toughest part of self-publishing is getting attention for your book.” Finder goes onto point out that in 2011 nearly 350,000 new print titles were published. And 150,000 to 200,000 of them were put out by self-publishing companies. He goes onto write, “The biggest thing you have against you in trying to sell  your book is that people don’t know about it.” The article explains the two basic kinds of self-publishing companies, both Web-based. If you are interested in writing a book yourself, or have one already published, take a look at this article in today’s TIMES. The truth is that most self-published books sell fewer than 100 or 150 copies. For every Fifty Shades of Grey there are 100,000 books that are . . .

Jessica Bodiford, author of The Village Idiot: The True Stories of a Peace Corps Volunteer, spoke yesterday at the Rotary Club luncheon in Brookhaven, Georgia. Bodiford is currently the Corporate Volunteerism manager for Hands on Atlanta. At the Rotary luncheon she spoke about how in the Peace Corps she used her bachelor’s degree in theatre as a way to educate people about the importance of sending girls to school. Jessica has also written a radio play about her experiences in Togo called Peace Corps Noire Americaine for the Atlanta Fringe Festival.

Michael Thomsen (China & Madagascar 2002-05) lives in New York but is from Fresno, California, went to UCLA and the Peace Corps, and writes about sex. His new book is Levitate The Primate: Hand Jobs, internet Dating, and Other issues for Men. The book jacket says it is a love story, “told in the margins of a new philosophy of 21st Century sexuality.” Each essay recounts bad sex, shambolic internet dates, moral infirmness, handjobs, blowjobs, an HIV scare, an STD, and a hope-filled cross-country move that ended in shambles. The collection is (more from the promotional material) “an epistolary memento of struggling with identity, circumstance, gender constraints, and time itself–all bound by a stubborn animal faith in love as an act of insupportable ascendency, a kind of levitation, longed-for by creatures never meant to leave the ground.” According to Adam Wilson (Flatscreen): Michael Thomsen writes about sex like someone who’s actually had it. That . . .

From Southern Belle to Global Rebel: Memoirs of an Anthropologist and Activist by Mary Lindsay Elmendorf (PC Trainer/Consultant – Puerto Rico 1962–63) Sharon Fitzpatrick Publications $12.00 342 pages 2012 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) PEOPLE LIKE MARY LINDSAY ELMENDORF SHOULD ALWAYS write memoirs because, though we may know them for years, we don’t know everything about them. Reading about Mary’s life is like accompanying her on a long and fascinating journey. Mary’s personal life is a story of challenges and joyful adventures, while her professional life reflects over seventy years of international history and global issues. Mary’s memoir is replete with photos that show her as a charming child, as a long-legged, lovely woman, and a mature, gracious lady. Her smile is always there, genuine, exuding a joie de vivre that marks her life. Mary was born in 1917 and raised in North Carolina in the bosom of . . .

In The Rubble by Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966–68) I became a Nigerian news junkie after I left the country hastily on July 31, 1967. Having lost all communication with anyone there, I searched for any newspapers and magazines with the tiniest article related to the war. I followed the early Biafran victories and the later losses closely. When Enugu fell, I worried about what might be happening in my village, Ishiagu, about fifty miles south. Whenever I saw pictures of dead soldiers, I thought about students like Celestine and Sylvester who had joined the army. When I saw pictures of kwashiorkor babies, I thought about my fellow teacher Otu’s daughter, Ngozi, who I had cradled in my arms. The only good news came when the damn war finally ended. But what happened to Ishiagu? Sometime in the early seventies I got a small brown-paper package in the mail . . .

Charles Ipcar (Ethiopia 1965-68) has co-edited The Complete Poetry of Cicely Fox Smith with James Saville. They collected 640 poems of this British poet from the early 20th century, 90 of which have been adapted for singing and recorded by members of the folk music community around the world. The book is available for sale via Amazon. com. Cicely Fox Smith was described by a reviewer as the “poet of the sea.” This accolade was not casually given or thinly deserved, it was a considered evaluation of the immense body of work that was admired universally by all, and in particular those who sailed and were of the sea. For the first time, this book, “The Complete Poetry of Cicely Fox Smith,” brings all her poetry together in one book for all to see not only the quantity, but the quality of her poetry. Cicely Fox Smith was born February . . .

Lora, where and when were you in the Peace Corps? I was in the Peace Corps twice. In Tunisia from 1989–1991 and in Papua New Guinea for a year in 1996. What was your Tunisia assignment? I served my first year in the capital, Tunis, as an English Professor at Institut Des Langues Vivantes, Tunis (the University of Tunis). For my second year, I moved two hours west to the town of Beja to teach in a satellite school for the university. For my special project (a requirement for teachers during summer season) I directed a teacher training program for several of my co-volunteers. The program allowed over 150 Tunisian students access to free English lessons. And in Papua New Guinea? I lived in the extremely remote village of Kantobo in the Southern Highlands Province. I worked on an eco-tourism/rainforest conservation project with the World Wildlife Fund. I also worked . . .

This review by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64)  appeared today, July 31, 2012, in The Washington Post. • Book review: ‘The Lower River,’ by Paul Theroux By Richard Lipez Former Peace Corps volunteers sometimes like to take sentimental journeys back to the towns and villages where they spent a couple of years expanding their world views and doing useful work. I’ve gone on such a visit myself, and it’s gratifying. But Ellis Hock isn’t so lucky. He’s the protagonist in “The Lower River,” a grim-spirited and rattlingly suspenseful new novel by Paul Theroux, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. When Hock returns to Malawi after 40 years, instead of enjoying a happy reunion he is taken captive by his erstwhile hosts and treated to a long, hideous look at Africa at its phantasmagoric worst. The strengths of this novel, Theroux’s 29th work of fiction, are numerous. For deep-in-the-bush . . .

An interview with Will Lutwick (Fiji 1968–70) about his book Dodging Machetes: How I Survived Forbidden Love, Bad Behavior, and the Peace Corps in Fiji that was published in May of this year by Peace Corps Writers. • Will, where did you go to college? I got my BA from Duke in ’67, then an MBA from the University Michigan in 1968. What was your job in the Peace Corps, Will? For the first six months credit union co-op, wholesale food co-op. Last 14 months: working for the Fiji government doing marketing: pushing passion fruit and handicrafts (tapa cloth, cannibal forks, war clubs et. al.) to the American market, and internal marketing of oranges from the most remote island  (Rotuma) to the largest, most populous island (Viti Levu). My language training was in Hindi as 51% of the population then was Indian (mostly descendants of indentured servants who opted to . . .