Peace Corps Writers Awards – Page 2

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers’ Award for Best Book for a Young Reader

Jul 14 2023

Kansas Kaleidoscope Mark G. Wentling Honduras (1967–69) & Togo (1970–73) In many ways, 11-year-old Marky is a typical kid in 1950s Kansas. He collects baseball cards like other boys his age, goes fishing and hunting with his father, and has a good shot at winning his town’s annual turtle race. But his family is not immune to hardships. Marky and his siblings, for example, rarely see their dad, Boyd, who works the graveyard shift at an aircraft plant 30 miles away. Their mother, Gerry, is a manic-depressive; Marky adores her but is perpetually worried about her oscillating moods. After two decades of marriage and six children, Marky’s parents engage in arguments that escalate in frequency and violence. Intense fights send Gerry fleeing to a neighbor’s house only for Boyd to chase her down. With his older siblings out of the nest, Marky becomes the protector of his two . . .

2023 Winner of Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction

Jul 12 2023

Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet by Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) The incredible story of Benjamin Franklin’s parting gift to the working-class people of Boston and Philadelphia — a deathbed wager that captures the Founder’s American Dream and his lessons for our current, conflicted age. Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. In Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet, Michael Meyer traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and . . .

2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers‘ Maria Thomas Award for Best Fiction

Jul 04 2023

The World Against Her Skin: A Son’s Novel John Thorndike (El Salvador 1967-68) The World Against Her Skin is an extraordinary work, written by a mature, highly published author. John Thorndike defines his book as a “Son’s Novel,” a hybrid memoir/novel or “biographical novel.” It is his endeavor to know his mother, as he openly states in his “Author’s Note, “I want to know everything about my mother,” especially the secrets that were kept from him as her son. He inhabits this woman character in order to know her. His are the height of literary goals; find truth through your imagination, cross boundaries through sympathy and empathy, and do it because you need to for survival. It beautifully flies in the face of current stricture to only write what you can know as determined by your gender, race, ethnicity, class and so on. Thorndike completely succeeds in capturing feelings that many . . .

2022 Award for Writer of the Year

Aug 28 2022

Tom Bissell Uzbekistan 1996 Tom Bissell was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. He has published ten books, including Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia (2003), The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (2007), Apostle (2016), and Creative Types: And Other Stories (2021). His work has been awarded the Rome Prize, the 2004 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Book for Chasing the Sea, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also done extensive screenwriting work for both the video-game industry and Hollywood. His work on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End earned him a WGA Award for Best Video Game Writing. He co-developed the series The Mosquito Coast, based on the novel of the same name by RPCV Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963–65), for Apple Television. His most well-known book, The Disaster Artist: My Life inside ‘The Room’, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever . . .

2022 Winner of the Best Third Goal Effort: LUCKY: An African Student, An American Dream, and a Long Bike Ride

Aug 27 2022

by Brooke Marshall Malawi 2013–15 Poverty, hunger, disease, and a damaged education system prevent most rural Malawian students from finishing high school. Even if you’re persistent, gifted, and lucky enough to graduate with honors, college is prohibitively expensive. You could be the smartest kid in school and still end up working as a subsistence farmer for the rest of your life. What if these students could go to college in America? To try to answer this question, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Brooke Marshall rode a bicycle from Raleigh to Seattle, visiting universities and telling them about the potential of students from the African village. This is a story about her journey, the people she met, and what she learned on the way. It’s about what happens when you try to change the world: the good, the bad, and the awkward. And it’s a passionate plea for everyone — whether . . .

2022 Winner of the Best Short Story Collection — A HUSBAND AND WIFE ARE ONE SATAN

Aug 19 2022

by Jeff Fearnside Kazakhstan 2002–04 I find a great deal of pleasure in reading fiction set in other cultures or countries, especially when the work demonstrates more than a superficial understanding of the place about which it is written. That was one motivation behind the anthology series I curated, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Press 53 2016). It was also in that context that I first became aware of Jeff Fearnside’s work when his story set in Kazakhstan, “A Husband and Wife are One Satan,” was included in the first volume of that series. I recognized then that, having been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan, Fearnside had the depth of knowledge of his chosen setting to bring the culture and his characters to life in both an informative and entertaining way. It was a joy, then, to discover that the story we published is the title . . .

2022 Award for Best Book for Young Adults — ADVENTURES OF MAYANA: FALLING OFF THE EDGE OF THE EARTH

Aug 18 2022

by David Perry Belize, 1985-87 The Adventures of Mayana: Falling Off the Edge of the Earth is the story of a 17-year Belizean girl named Mayana who finds herself on an adventure in a fantasyland of magic, monsters, and intrigue. She crosses over from her homeland of Belize to an alternate reality where the laws of nature and science are very different from what she learned. While she attempts to find her way back to Belize, she befriends a young man named Shifu who mysteriously appears, and speaks only in parables. He helps Mayana use her new-found magic powers to fight monsters and witches and to attempt to find her way home. Shifu also helps her to discover the meaning of life, how to understand why people are the way they are, and most of all how to understand herself. All during her journey, she relies on the recollections of . . .

2022 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Winner — I MISS THE RAIN IN AFRICA

Aug 17 2022

by Nancy Daniel Wesson (Uganda 2011-13) At a time when her friends were planning cushy retirements, Nancy Wesson instead walked away from a comfortable life and business to head out as a Peace Corps Volunteer in post-war Northern Uganda. She embraced wholeheartedly the grand adventure of living in a radically different culture, while turning old skills into wisdom. Returning home became a surreal experience in trying to reconcile a life that no longer “fits.” This becomes the catalyst for new revelations about family wounds, mystical experiences, and personal foibles. Nancy shows us the power of stepping into the void to reconfigure life and enter the wilderness of the uncharted territory of our own memories and psyche, to mine the gems hidden therein. Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and tender, I Miss the Rain in Africa is the story of honoring the self, discovering a new lens through which to view life, and finding . . .

2022 Maria Thomas Fiction Award Winner — A THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT

Aug 15 2022

by MARC-VINCENT JACKSON (SENEGAL 1986–89) Beautiful and determined, an outcast Senegalese woman clings relentlessly to dreams of her beloved savior, a lost folklore hero, returning to her from across the ocean … Broken, but wise, a devoted griot painfully witnesses and faithfully tells her dogged plight, loving her from afar and mostly in vain … Committed American volunteers zealously navigate a developing, culturally rich African country, becoming intimately immersed, and sometimes, unwittingly entangled … Alienated and frustrated, one unsuspecting volunteer bitterly chronicles his uneasy experiences with unsparing criticism … A desperate journey, an unspoken heart, patriotic dedication, and a candid diary lyrically meld into a seamless mystical reality with surprising results. Inspired by his U.S. Peace Corps service during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Marc-Vincent Jackson has written A Thousand Points of Light, an insightful debut novel that is an artfully written with an engaging tale of interwoven lives . . .

Winners of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers Book Awards

Dec 30 2021

Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writer of the Year Award For her entire body of work Mildred D. Taylor (Ethiopia 1965-67) Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award Streets of Golfito: A Novel by Jim LaBate (Costa Rica 1973-75) Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers Paul Cowan Non- fiction Award Every Hill A Burial Place: The Peace Corps Murder Trial in East Africa by Peter H. Reid (Tanzania 1964–66) Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers’ Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award Between Inca Walls: A Peace Corps Memoir by Evelyn Kohl La Torre (Peru 1964-66) Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers’ Marian Haley Beil Best Book Review Award Rich Wandschneider (Turkey 1965-67) for review of An Indian Among Los Indigenas by Ursula Pike Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers’ Rowland Scherman Award . . .

Winner of the 2021 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award

Dec 28 2021

Streets of Golfito: A Novel by Jim LaBate (Costa Rica 1973-75) Mohawk River Press 252 pages October 2020 $9.99 (Kindle); $19.95 (Paperback Review by James W. Skelton, Jr. (Ethiopia 1970-72) • Jim LaBate has crafted an exceptional Peace Corps novel that takes place in Golfito, Costa Rica, the same town in which he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the 1970s. One of the main characters is, coincidentally, named Jim, a prospective PCV, who has just arrived in Costa Rica in 1974 to train for his assignment as a Sports Promoter. While attending in-country orientation in San Jose, one of the Peace Corps administrators advises Jim to change his name if he really wants to immerse himself into the culture. The PC official’s reasoning is that Costa Ricans seem to accept the PCVs more readily if they use a name that’s familiar to them. So, Jim adopts the . . .

Winner of the 2021 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award

Dec 20 2021

Between Inca Walls: A Peace Corps Memoir By Evelyn Kohl La Torre (Peru 1964-66) She Writes Press 256 pages August 2020 $16.95 (paperback); $8.99 (kindle) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • This book is well written as the president of the National Association of Memoir Writers Linda Joy Myers describes, “Evelyn LaTorre creates a masterful portrait of place — from the Montana hills to the peaks of Perú — and illustrates how place shapes us. The many lovely metaphors and descriptions throughout the book invite the reader to see through the eyes of an innocent girl as she discovers exotic, lively cultures; absorbs the colors, sounds, passion, and intensity of that new world; and allows it to change her life path.” One scene in Cusco, Peru provides a myriad of details which gave a real sense of this exotic community — Scores of small dark, leather-skinned Indians ran . . .

New List of Peace Corps authors who have published 2 or more books

Nov 27 2021

Here is our list of RPCV & staff authors we know of who have published two or more books of any type. Currently, the count is 464. If you know of someone who has and their name is not on this list, then please email: jcoyneone@gmail.com. We know we don’t have all such writers who have served over these past 60 years. Thank you.’ • Jerome R. Adams (Colombia 1963–65) Tom Adams (Togo 1974-76) Thomas “Taj” Ainlay, Jr. (Malaysia 1973–75) Elizabeth (Letts) Alalou (Morocco 1983–86) Jane Albritton (India 1967-69) Robert Albritton (Ethiopia 1962-65) Usha Alexander (Vanuatu 1996–97) James G. Alinder (Somalia 1964-66) Richard Alleman (Morocco 1968-70) Hayward Allen (Ethiopia 1962-64) Diane Demuth Allensworth (Panama 1964–66) Paul E. Allaire (Ethiopia 1964–66) Allman (Nepal 1966-68) Nancy Amidei (Nigeria 1964–65) Gary Amo (Malawi 1962–64) David C. Anderson (Costa Rica 1964-66) Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1963-65) Peggy Anderson (Togo 1962-64) James Archambeault (Philippines 1965-67) Ron Arias (Peru . . .

2021 Peace Corps Writers’ Marian Haley Beil Award for Best Book Review to Rich Wandschneider (Turkey) for AN INDIAN AMONG LOS INDIGENAS by Ursula Pike

Sep 14 2021

The 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. Rich’s Review My two-year Peace Corps experience ended with a 20-kilometer minivan trip from our Turkish-Kurdish village to the train station in the city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey. When my village partner Barb and I got to the platform with our bags and boxes, other minivans showed up with a dozen or more of our village friends. The picture of that leaving and the faces and dress of some of those villagers have been fixed in my mind . . .

Peace Corps Worldwide Awards: 2021 Paul Cowan Award for Best Non-Fiction to Peter Reid (Tanzania)

Aug 15 2021

THE PAUL COWAN NON-FICTION AWARD, first given 1990, was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador from 1966 to 1967. Cowan wrote about his time as a Volunteer in Latin America in the ’60s. A longtime activist and political writer for The Village Voice, Cowan died of leukemia in 1988. • Every Hill a Burial Place The Peace Corps Murder Trial in East Africa by Peter H. Reid (Tanzania 1964-66) On March 28, 1966, Peace Corps personnel in Tanzania received word that volunteer Peppy Kinsey had fallen to her death while rock climbing during a picnic. Local authorities arrested Kinsey’s husband, Bill, and charged him with murder as witnesses came forward claiming to have seen the pair engaged in a struggle. The incident had the potential to be disastrous for both the Peace Corps and the newly independent nation of Tanzania. To this day, the high stakes . . .