Peace Corps Writers Awards – Peace Corps Worldwide

2024 Peace Corps Writers’ Marian Haley Beil Award for Best Book Review to Ben East (Malawi) for IF YOU TURN TO LOOK BACK by Tom Hazuka (Chile)

Aug 25 2024

2024 Peace Corps Writers’ Best Book Review Award is named in honor of Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64), co-founder and publisher since 1989 of the Peace Corps Writers newsletter, website, and book imprint. Following her tour of service, Marian worked for 4 years in the Office of Reports and Special Studies at Peace Corps Headquarters. She founded the Ethiopia & Eritrea RPCV group in 1991, and later co-founded Rochester RPCVs. If You Turn to Look Back: A Memoir and Meditation by Tom Hazuka (Chile 1978-80) Woodhall Press 388 pages September 2023 $19.95 (Paperback); $9.99 (Kindle) If You Turn to Look Back combines memoir with political, social, and economic investiif gations of what it means to be an American and a citizen of the world. American influence is ubiquitous in South America, and If You Turn to Look Back explores these relationships in a personal context. For Tom Hazuka was once part . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers’ Poetry Award Winner

Aug 22 2024

I Am a Fact Not a Fiction: Selected Poems Edward Mycue (Ghana 1961-63) San Francisco poet Edward Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and raised in Texas. He was a Lowell Fellow at Boston University Graduate School of Public Relations and Communications, a WGBH-TV Boston intern, a Macdowell Colony Fellow, a Peace Corps teacher in Ghana, editor at the Norton Coker Press, and he taught American Literature at the International Peoples College in Elsinore, Denmark. He has had 18 books or chapbooks published. His poems appear in multiple anthologies and journals. I Am a Fact Not a Fiction is a selection of poems culled from three areas of interest: War and Peace, Life / Time Memory, and History. . . . “The precision of Ed Mycue’s dreamscape is laser-sharp and as warm as chocolate. Images rush pell-mell across the page, jumbling and tossing each other aside as one . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers Best Children’s Book Award Winner!

Aug 21 2024

The Fly That Flew Off The Handle by Jonathan Foret (Tonga 2004-06) and illustrated by Alexis Braud When you have a story to tell, you’re in the midst of a national pandemic, and you’re Jonathan Foret, you write a book. The original story is beautifully illustrated by Alexis Braud, who is cut-out to be a professional artist, bringing Jonathan’s story to life in the pages of The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. . . . Jonathan, who is the Executive Director of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, is proud to present his newly published children’s book, The Fly that Flew Off the Handle. “The story is about a little fly named Lester who often feels angry, but doesn’t quite know why or what to do about it,” explained the author. After a long journey of trying and failing to feel better, Lester meets a little butterfly, Seymour, who helps . . .

P. F. Kluge Writer of the Year (Micronesia)

Jul 04 2024

2024 Peace Corps Writer of the Year P.F. Kluge (Micronesia 1967-69) Writer-in-Residence at Kenyon College, is the author of fourteen books and scores of magazines, newspaper and academic journal articles. The films Dog Day Afternoon and Eddie and the Cruisers are based on his writing. In 1975, Kluge returned to Micronesia as a director of the Constitutional Convention that created the Federated States of Micronesia. He is the author of the Preamble to the Constitution. For his book, The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia, initially published by Random House and currently in paperback from the University of Hawaii Press, Kluge was awarded the Paul Cowan Prize for the best nonfiction book by a returned Peace Corps Volunteer. P. F. Kluge’s Books The Day That I Die (1976) “A thriller set in the Pacific islands I saw as a Peace Corps Volunteers. The novel was suggested by a . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers Historical Book Award Winner!

Jun 23 2024

“Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird”— Searching for Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s Faithful Companion by Paul Sochaczewski Boeneo Island 1969-71) For some 50 years, Paul Sochaczewski (Boeneo Island 1969-71) has been on the trail of famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his little-known assistant Ali. The result of this quest is an imaginative “enhanced biography” of an illiterate 19th-century teenager from Boerneo who helped Wallace become one of history’s most successful explorers of the natural world. This deliciously speculative book, filled with humor and touching scenes of imagined conversations, takes a hard look at “slippery truth,” and, perhaps most important, asks the question: “Is there someone in your life who has quietly helped you, perhaps without adequate recognition, on your journey?” • • • In this innovative approach to biography, you’ll discover: New clues that expand our knowledge of Ali’s background and career. Why writing the history of . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award Winner!

Jun 22 2024

One Beats The Bush, The Max Donovan Adventures #1 by Riall Nolan (Senegal 1965–68) Riall Nolan (Senegal 1965-68) grew up in upstate* New York, and joined the Peace Corps after graduating from college. He was sent to Senegal, in West Africa, an experience from which he has never fully recovered. While there he began to notice that many development projects didn’t work very well, largely because outside experts lacked basic cultural understanding of local communities. That’s when he decided to become an anthropologist. He headed to the University of Sussex in England where he obtained a doctorate, and began working around the world as a development planner. He spent nearly twenty years overseas, in places like Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Tunisia and Sri Lanka. When he returned to the US at long last, he became a university administrator in charge of international education at several large research . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers Best Peace Corps Memoir Award Winner!

Jun 21 2024

Taking the Plunge Into Ethiopia: Tales of a Peace Corps Volunteer by William L. Hershey (Ethiopia 1968-70) William Hershey served as the only Peace Corps Volunteer in the small Ethiopian town of Dabat. He taught seventh and eighth grade students the English that they would need to continue their educations and brighten their futures. He became part of the community, eating the local food and doing his best to communicate in Amharic. He also navigated cultural gaffes — having his house stoned by disgruntled students angered at being assigned to clean the outhouses; and nearly sparking international trouble by clashing with a player from a rival school during a heated basketball game. Decades later as a journalist, he used his once-in-a-lifetime Peace Corps experience to reflect on immigration, global goodwill and the hope the United States should share with the rest of the world. • • • William Hershey spent . . .

2024 Peace Corps Writers’ Moritz Thomsen Experience Award Winner!

Jun 19 2024

Immense Missed Opportunities – IMO by Helene Ballman Dudley (Colombia 1968-70; Slovakia 1997-99) Immense Missed Opportunities – IMO draws on the author’s 23 years of experience building sustainable micro-loan programs in marginalized communities around the world. Based on her experience, and backed by research and recommendations from renowned experts, IMO identifies the vast and largely untapped potential for high-impact, low-cost interventions to reduce poverty, food insecurity, economic migration and gender-based violence. Extreme poverty has marginalized people who are living on the front lines of those problems and who have, perhaps the greatest potential to help solve those problems. People living on under $2 per day require all their energy and problem-solving skills to meet the most basic needs for their families. IMO offers examples of what they can accomplish when they are freed from abject poverty. The book closely follows a group of market vendors and subsistence farmers in . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award as “Writer of the Year”

Aug 01 2023

Richard Wiley (Korea 1967–69) Richard Wiley, who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea, 1967-69, is an American novelist and short-story writer whose first novel, Soldiers in Hiding, won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Since then, he has published seven other novels and a wide variety of short stories. His subsequent novels, Fool’s Gold, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens, and Indigo received favorable notice in America’s flagship book periodical the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Despite this, only his more recent book Ahmed’s Revenge, published by Random House remains in print. Richard holds a B. A. from the University of Puget Sound and an M. A. from Sophia University in Tokyo. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied under the venerable John Irving. Since 1989, Richard has been a Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers’ Publisher’s Award

Jul 31 2023

Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call Harlan Russell Green (Turkey 1964–66) Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call, Harlan Green’s memoir of his years working to build successful communities at home and abroad, shows what is possible when communities come together to improve their lives. He describes his work as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural community development program in a Turkish village teaching vocational skills and convincing the villagers to develop new agricultural methods. Green also worked as a photographer and filmmaker for the USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) in its earliest days lobbying communities to implement the Clean Air and Water Acts that were enacted to mitigate the growing air and water pollution. He joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers of America during its mid-1970s struggle organizing seasonal farm workers to better their living conditions; and documented the grape and lettuce boycotts, and Cesar’s charismatic leadership using . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers‘ Publisher’s Special Staff Award

Jul 25 2023

Back to the Future in Bandipur Chin Kumar Shrestha’ (Staff/Nepal) translated by Mike Gill (Nepal 1967-70) English version edited by John Comings (Nepal 1969-72) This autobiography by a Nepali provides all RPCVs a window into the impact they had on the people who trained them, worked with them and were their friends. “I really enjoyed reading From Bandipur and Back (Ghumiphiri Bandipur), by my old friend Chij Kumar Shrestha, and happy to be included in the English translation. There is a special reason for my pleasure. Chij and I are almost the same age and have had many of the same experiences. This book presents the story of how a young man educated in a village school overcame countless obstacles as a result of his diligence, hard work, and honesty, rising to a position of great public success in a city like Kathmandu. At the same time, this book . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Peace Corps Memoir

Jul 22 2023

Turquoise: Three Years in Ghana A Peace Corps Memoir by Lawrence Grobel Ghana (1968-71) • In 1968, Larry Grobel did the party-hardy at the Aboakyere festival in Ghana, a “crazy, wild stoned-out freaky affair! People filling the streets like army ants around a carcass. No space left uncovered, dancing, drumming, singing and chanting, laughing and shouting, moving, jumping, throwing flags, waving swords, guzzling beer, pito, palm wine and akpeteshe, chewing kola nuts, smoking wee,’ celebrating the way a festival should be celebrated: up high and out of sight!” Grobel, then twenty-one, thought he was going to Guyana as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He misread; he was sent to Ghana. The names started with ‘G’ and ended in ‘ana’. One was in South America, the other in West Africa. Didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t Vietnam, as he explains in his most recent memoir, Turquoise. He opposed the Vietnam War. Turquoise is a panoply of vignettes . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Travel Book

Jul 19 2023

My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road: Part of the Yin and Yang of Travel Series Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73) This book is part of the author’s “Yin and Yang of Travel” series of ten essays, which was inspired by Paul Theroux’s (Malawi 1963–65) The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road Mr. Walker has spent over 50 years traveling in many countries around the world, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, and later as a professional fund raiser for various nonprofit organizations or NGOs. The book is an easy read. Walker writes in a conversational style, and it is only 63 pages. It is primarily a journal of his travels alone, with his family, and leading trips for donors to NGOs he worked for. His travel has been mostly off the beaten path rather than to popular tourist destinations. It is apparent he has learned . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Poetry Book

Jul 17 2023

Ten Years A Poet Philip Fretz (Sierra Leone 1967–69) I have written poems and short stories since I can remember, years before word processing freed me from the perils of my illegible handwriting. Subsequent to retiring, I discovered first the Osher Life Long Learning program in Lewes, Delaware, and then the Renaissance Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of these programs offered many opportunities to practice writing in many subject areas with encouragement from classmates and instructors. The selection of poems in this volume represent many that were spawned by participation in these programs. I’ve been awakened to notice the people I see in ordinary settings and events that occur in everyday life. They arouse my inspiration to record what I see and hear and translate those ideas into poetry and prose. Philip Fretz has lived in Philadelphia, southern Delaware, and in Baltimore, MD. He has been an active . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers‘ Moritz Thomsen Award for Best Book about the Peace Corps Experience

Jul 16 2023

A Five Finger Feast Two Years in Kazakhstan, Lessons from the Peace Corps by Tim Suchsland (Kazakhstan 2007–09) author and illustrator • A Five Finger Feast is a collection of coming-of-age stories set to the backdrop of Kazakhstan, with the ups and the downs, the excitement and the thrill of living abroad as a young person and working in the Peace Corps. Tim Suchsland, a teacher and artist, takes the reader on a very interesting journey into a vast corner of the world that none of us has ever seen, of which we know virtually nothing, which borders on Russia’s infamous Siberia and yet is populated with very interesting people — Kazaks from many tribes, Armenians, Volga Germans and Russians — each with a story of how their people came to be in the village of Valenka, twenty miles from the Russian border and 840 miles (22 hours by road) from . . .