Peace Corps Fund Sponsors Third Goal Writers’ Workshop this September in Maryland

 Peace Corps Fund Sponsors Third Goal Writers’ Workshop
this September in Maryland

Release Date: May 1, 2019                                                  

Contact: Matt Losak (Lesotho 1985-88)
301-588-3987 

Want to spend three days in September on the Eastern Shore of Maryland discussing your book with other RPCV writers and published authors? Peace Corps Writers, with support from the Peace Corps Fund, is arranging a small, inexpensiveworkshop for ten to fifteen RPCVs and formers Peace Corps staff working on their own Peace Corps memoir, poetry, or fiction. The workshop will be held from Wednesday, September 18^th to Saturday, September 21^rd at Shore Retreats on Broad Creek, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. Costs range from $100 for those on tight budgets, $250 for those of modest means, and $500 for those who can afford it. The retreat facility includes shared living quarters, meals and snacks.

The writing program will include lectures by the faculty, readings by all participants, reviews of manuscripts by the faculty, individual conferences, class discussions on techniques, and time for conversations and relaxation.

Those attending the Workshop should submit the first 20 pages of their manuscript before September 1^st to be reviewed by the faculty. Poets should submit a minimum of 10 poems for review.

Space is extremely limited. If you are interested in attending please contact RPCV Writers Workshop director John Coyne at jcoyneone@gmail.com.

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The Peace Corps Writers Workshop Faculty

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) author of eight books, including The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and Julia & Rodrigo, winner of the 2012 Gival Press Novel Award. His latest book, The Rink Girl: Stories, won the 2018 Prize Americana (Hollywood Books). He wrote the script for the award-winning Peace Corps film How Far Are You Willing to Go to Make a Difference? He is a professor of English at West Virginia University.

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John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-1964) is the author of 28 books of fiction and non-fiction. His short stories have been included in several “best of” anthologies, such as The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His most recent books ares a collection of short stories, A Game in the Sun, the instructional book How To Write A Novel In 100 Days, and Long Ago and Far Away, a love story set in Africa, Europe and the United States that spans 40 years. He has published three novels on golf and edited three books of golf instruction. Today he is also an adjunct professor for National University of California in their online Creative Writing MFA program.

Matthew Davis (Mongolia 2000-02) is the founding director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University. His Peace Corps memoir When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale  was the winner of the Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award of 2011. He’s been a Fellow at New America and the Black Mountain Institute and was a Fulbright Fellow to Syria and Jordan.

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Jeanne D’Haem (Somalia 1968-70) an emeritus professor at William Paterson University and frequently lectures on issues in special education. She has published two prize-winning books and numerous journal articles. The Last Camel: True Stories about Somalia won the Peace Corps Worldwide Paul Cowan prize for non-fiction. Desert Dawn, written with Waris Dirie, has been translated into over twenty languages and was on the best seller list in Germany for over a year. It was awarded the Corine Prize for non-fiction. Her most recent book is Inclusion: The Dream and the Reality inside Special Education.

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Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp. She is the author of three novels: Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother’s Island. She is a recipient of an American Book Award, the Peace Corps Worldwide Maria Thomas Award for Outstanding Fiction, Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, New York Public Library “Best Books for the Teenager,” a New York Times Book Review “New and Noteworthy in Paperback,” and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” choice. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She is currently at work on a hybrid memoir/biography about her friendship with a Nisei showgirl who was incarcerated during WWII.

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Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) is the author of História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands that won the 2014 Peace Corps Worldwide Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award. She is also the author of three books of poetry, The Imaginal Marriage, Bartram’s Garden, and The Book of Sleep, all from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and many others. She won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for 2019, and was a 2014/2016 Fulbright fellow to Brazil, where she researched and wrote about traditional midwifery. She lives in the Philadelphia area.

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Founded in 2003, the Peace Corps Fund is a 501-c-3 nonprofit organization founded by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers to support the Third Goal of the Peace Corps — to increase the understanding of the people served on the part of Americans.