Peace Corps Worldwide – Page 329 – promoting Peace Corps writers since 1989

Talking with Jane Albritton, Editor of the Peace Corps at 50 Project

Mar 09 2012

Interview by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) WHILE MOST OF US STRUGGLE with our own Peace Corps memoir, Jane Albritton undertook a herculean task: to gather enough Peace Corps personal experience essays to fill a multi-volume anthology. After four years of intense work, she completed the task in 2011 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps’ inception. The four volumes include more than 200 essays that describe the Peace Corps Experience in 88 of the 139 nations served during the past half century. The principal and founder of a writing and editing firm (as well as a university writing instructor), Jane began the Peace Corps at 50 Project with the posting of a very unusual website and an all-call for personal experience essay submissions. As the series editor, she recruited editors, oversaw editing, negotiated publication, supervised formatting, cover design and finally manages marketing. What on earth inspired . . .

Now Here's a Great Idea and Event in D.C.

Mar 09 2012

Peace Corps Town Hall Meeting Looking forward to the next 50 years RPCV/W cordially invites you to attend a Peace Corps Town Hall Meeting What: a forum with returned volunteers and Peace Corps leadership to listen and discuss current agency initiatives Where: Peace Corps Headquarters, Shriver Hall; 1111 20th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20526 When: March 14, 2012 from 6PM – 7PM (please arrive 10-15 minutes early to clear security and check in at registration) How: you must register to attend, (open to members and non-members) Program: 1. Welcome and introduction from RPCV/W leadership 2. Remarks from the RPCV/W President Chris Austin 3. Remarks from the NPCA President-Kevin Quigley 4. Remarks from Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams 5. Q & A, audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions, questions submitted online will also be addressed Have questions but can’t attend the town hall? Email your questions to Kristina . . .

Another China RPCV Writer Wins Another Writing Award!

Mar 08 2012

March 07, 2012 Discover Great New Writers award Michael Levy’s (China 2005-07) memoir, Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating With China’s Other Billion ( Holt), was one of the two winners of Barnes & Noble’s annual “Discover Great New Writers” awards, announced Wednesday at a lunch in New York. The memoir by Levy, 35, a teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. , recounts his Peace Corps experience in rural China in 2005 as a basketball-playing, kosher vegetarian. He said he began the day Wednesday at his day job – a Catholic school where a “wide-eyed 9-year-old asked me why I was dressed in a jacket and tie.” Levy replied that he was going to a ceremony to celebrate “great new writers.” The girl got very excited and asked, “Did you write The Hunger Games?” He had to explain that he didn’t. A panel of former award winners picked the winers. Each received $10,000 and . . .

A Writer Writes "The Good Old Days"

Mar 08 2012

Roger Landrum was a PCV in Nigeria, 1961-63. He taught at the new University of Nigeria at Nsukka in Nigeria’s first year of independence and his experience was the subject of a Peace Corps documentary film called “Give Me A Riddle.” Landrum was one of the first RPCVs to join the PC/W staff. Landrum devoted most of his subsequent career to expanding youth service opportunities in the US. He founded and directed The Teachers Inc. which provided Peace Corps-like programming for American inner-city schools. Landrum co-authored Youth and the Needs of the Nation with Harris Wofford, a policy blueprint for a large-scale national service initiative. In 1986 Landrum launched Youth Service America (YSA) which led efforts to expand and mobilize a national youth service infrastructure that culminated in the National and Community Service Acts of 1990 and 1993 and creation of the federal Corporation for National Service along with AmeriCorps. As . . .

Angry PCVs write Celeste: Leaving El Salvador 1979 – 80 Part Four

Mar 07 2012

On February 27th, 13 Volunteers who had been evacuated to Guatemala wrote and signed a letter to Celeste. In the December 27th letter, entitled, “Volunteers Perspectives on the Voluntary Evacuation, December 1979 ((DNSA/GWU, Collection: El Salvador – The Making of U.S. Policy, 1977 – 1984. Item Number: ES00340), Volunteers wrote: Dear Mr. Celeste: We are Peace Corps Volunteers from El Salvador, Central America. We arrived a few days ago in a few days ago in Guatemala on a strong but confusing “suggestion” from the director that we leave El Salvador. We are but a part of the entire Peace Corps Volunteer personel in El Salvador. The others are in the United States, Honduras or are still in-country. Quite naturally we are upset….We recognize the immense strain the Peace Corps Staff, and ourselves, have been functioning under but feel this is a very poor excuse for the inefficient and ineffective . . .

Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) Awarded International Prize

Mar 07 2012

Yesterday evening, March 6, 2012, Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) received a Gourmand International World Cookbook Awards in Paris, France, for her book How to Cook a Crocodile. How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes was the first book published by the Peace Corps Writers Imprint. Bonnie’s book won the “Charity and Community” category award. The event, held in the Folies Bergeres theater, attracted an audience from all over the world. Bonnie, who is a blogger on this site at: Cooking Crocodiles & Other Food Musings, gave her acceptance speech in both French and English. The 16-year-old organization Gourmand International, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, publishes GOURMAND magazine and sponsors the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards. The 2011 awards celebration at the Folies Bergère kicks off a week-long Paris Cookbook Fair. Congratulations, Bonnie!

Bonnie Lee Black's ABC's of healthy cooking

Mar 06 2012

Our blogger Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996–98) got some recent press in her home state of New Mexico. Bonnie, who earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University/Los Angeles in June 2007, was an honors graduate of Columbia University (BA, Literature/Writing, 1979), and then a writer and editor for nearly 30 years, and an educator — in the U.S. and overseas — for over 15 years. For ten years (from 1986 to 1996) she was a chef, caterer, and cooking instructor in Manhattan, during which time her freelance writing focused on food. In 1996, she joined the Peace Corps and served as a health and nutrition Volunteer in Gabon in central Africa. Her book, How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes (Peace Corps Writers, 2010), recounts her experience teaching healthy cooking in Gabon. The following piece about Bonnie appeared online in The Taos News on Sunday, March 4, 2012. • Bonnie . . .

Sex & Santorum

Mar 05 2012

LAST WEEKEND I RECEIVED A PHONE CALL from Joan Corboy who was the wife of one of our APCDs back in Ethiopia in the early Sixties. She is now pushing 90, the mother of eight, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a wonderful woman. She called me to test her memory (it is, by the way, much better than mine!). Since I work at a Catholic college she wanted to know if I could get my hands on an article by Judge John T. Noonan, a Harvard educated lawyer, who had written a piece on contraception back in the mid-sixties. Joan, who is a faithful Catholic (Yes, Virginia, there are still some) was annoyed (to say the least) at all of Rick Santorum’s remarks on contraception, remembered the article, and wanted me to track it down for her. I had no idea who John T. Noonan, Jr. was, or about the article he had written on contraception. . . .

Academic article on PCVs in Africa

Mar 02 2012

David Peterson del Mar recently published in the scholarly journal, African Identities (Vol. 9. N0 4, November 2011, 349-361) an article entitled “RERFLECTION At the heart of things: Peace Corps volunteers in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Peterson, who is not an RPCV, is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University for the Department of History and Extended Campus. He is the author of six books, including What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives (Harvard University Press, 1996) and The American Family: From Obligation to Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). He is currently researching American attitudes toward Africa since World War II for his next book which is tentatively entitled, Africa Existenial. His research for this new book that led him to RPCVs who served in Africa, and the writing that they have done over the years. He wrote me, “I very much enjoyed the research (on PCVs in Africa) — and hope that . . .

Editor of Peace Corps Anthologies Jane Albritton (India 1967-69) Reading in Fort Collins

Mar 01 2012

Published at Coloradoan.com Fort Collins author assembles Peace Corps anthologies By Stacy Nick StacyNick@coloradoan.com IN 1967, 21-YEAR-OLD JANE ALBRITTON traveled to India as a volunteer for the Peace Corps. It was an experience that changed her life and how she saw the world around her. Forty years later, it motivated her to tackle another adventure: putting her experiences, and those of other Peace Corps volunteers, on paper. With the help of fellow Peace Corps volunteers, Albritton put together a series of four anthologies featuring 200 stories from Volunteers who served all over the world to celebrate and honor 50 years of the Peace Corps. “I started getting old, actually,” Albritton joked as to why she decided to start the project. After years of “pestering” others to record their histories, it occurred to her that her and her fellow Volunteers’ stories might be lost if they weren’t written down. Albritton, a . . .

Happy Birthday to the Peace Corps: Making Lemonade In The Maiatico Building

Mar 01 2012

On this Peace Corps Birthday I thought I’d tell again one or two of the early stories about the agency. A lot has been written, especially last year, about those days when the Peace Corps attracted the best and the brightest, or so they claimed. One document stated the agency’s staff was composed of “skiers, mountain climbers, big-game hunters, prizefighters, football players, polo players and enough Ph.D.’s [30] to staff a liberal arts college.” There were 18 attorneys, of whom only four continue to work strictly as attorneys in the General Counsel’s office and the rest [including Sargent Shriver] did other jobs. Also, all of these employees were parents of some 272 children. In terms of staff and PCVs, the ratio was quite small. Figures from WWII showed 30 people were required to support every soldier in the front lines. After the war, peacetime ratio was one person in Washington to every four overseas. The Peace Corps was . . .

Review of A Small Key Opens Big Doors

Feb 29 2012

A Small Key Opens Big Doors: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories, Volume 3 — The Heart of Eurasia edited by Jay Chen (Kazakhstan 2005–08) Travelers’ Tales 336 pages $18.95 (paperback) 2011 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras, 1975–77) THE PEACE CORPS AT 50 PROJECT, that includes four volumes,* offers an unparalleled, operatic ensemble of voices, singing about the world. About two hundred men and women sing to us, describing 88 of the 139 nations served by the Peace Corps during the past 50 years. The voices are divided into four geographic movements. This book includes voices from those Americans who served in Eurasia — the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, its political satellites and periphery. For those who only vaguely remember the destruction of the Berlin Wall (1989) or television film of the Russian army’s retreat as the empire dissolved (1991), this federation ruled the largest geographic . . .

Publishing’s Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory

Feb 29 2012

Bloomberg Businessweek’s January 25th cover shows a book engulfed in flames. The book’s title? “Amazon Wants to Burn the Book Business.” A towering pile of books dominates the front page of Sunday’s NYT Business Section. The pile starts well below the fold (print edition), breaks through the section header at the top of the page, and leans precariously. Books are starting to tumble off. “The Bookstore’s Last Stand,” reads the headline. These stories capture pretty well the state of book publishing: this appears to be no ordinary, cyclical crisis that future authors and publishers will shrug off. To understand how the book industry got into this predicament, however, a broader perspective may be needed. The cover story of February’s Harper’s Magazine provides that, discussing a fundamental shift in the federal approach to antitrust law that’s affected bookselling and countless other industries. It’s a story that hasn’t previously been told in a . . .

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) Gets Home Town Press on his Award

Feb 29 2012

From The Daily Athenaeum, student newspaper of West Virginia University in Morgantown. Wednesday, February 22, 2012 • English professor receives literary award by Carlee Lammers For Mark Brazaitis, director of West Virginia University’s Creative Writing Program, inspiration and creativity have always sprung from personal experience and a fascination with particular images. “As a writer, I’m always curious about where certain images or ideas will take me,” Brazaitis said. The WVU professor is a recent winner of the University of Notre Dame’s Richard Sullivan Prize “The Incurables,” a collection of ten short stories about the impact of mental illness on the men and women in a small Ohio town. Brazaitis said the book also includes stories of other incurable conditions, familial relationships that never seem to satisfy anyone involved and romantic relationships that offer as much heartache as pleasure. “For the first story in the collection, ‘The Bridge,’ I had this vision . . .

Military trial in Peace Corps rape case begins

Feb 28 2012

Military trial in Peace Corps rape case begins Trial for Navy SEAL support team sailor accused of raping Peace Corps worker in Uganda begins By The Associated Press NORFOLK, Va. (AP) ‘ A former Peace Corps worker who taught at a girl’s school in rural Uganda has told a military jury that a sailor who does construction work for Navy SEALs raped her in his hotel room in the country’s capital. The 27-year-old woman testified Monday that her sexual encounter with Petty Officer 2nd Class Camaren Walker started out as consensual. But when his condom slipped off twice, she wanted him to stop. She says he raped her four times. During the military’s equivalent of a preliminary hearing in April, Walker’s attorneys suggested charges were brought because of political pressure. In opening arguments, one of Walker’s attorneys said the woman simply regretted her decision to have sex with Walker. The . . .