Peace Corps Writers To Share Experiences At CWU

May 2, 2005

Contact: Steve Horowitz (509-963-2512/fax 509-963-1380/e-mail: horowitz@cwu.edu)

ELLENSBURG, Wash. - Anyone interested in travel, writing or the Peace Corps adventure will have an opportunity to get a free trip around the globe without leaving Ellensburg during an evening of readings by former Peace Corps volunteers. The free, public event is scheduled for Wednesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. in the Central Washington University Grupe Center.

The evening will feature Washington writers Phil Damon, Susan Rich and event organizer Steve Horowitz, who put together a similar successful evening in 2002.

"The Peace Corps experience lends itself to vivid, thought-provoking writing," Horowitz says. "This evening of readings will allow the audience to see other cultures from a very unique perspective."

After serving in Ethiopia from 1963 to 1965, Damon was named a teaching and writing fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop where many well-known writers, including Kurt Vonnegut, mentored him. He taught creative writing and literature at the University of Hawaii for 34 years and currently lives in Bellingham.

Several dozen of his short stories have been published in publications such as The Iowa Review, Transatlantic Review, Best American Short Stories 1977 and New Stories for the Eighties.

Susan Rich, who served in Niger from 1984 to 1986, is the author of "The Cartographer's Tongue/Poems of the World" and winner of the PEN West/Poetry award and Peace Corps Readers and Writers awards in 2001. She has had more than 50 poems published or forthcoming in journals and anthologies including the Christian Science Monitor, Double Take, Harvard Magazine, Massachusetts Review and Poet Lore.

Rich, who received a Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa, taught at the University of Cape Town and conducted research on the intersection of human rights and poetry. She holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and the University of Oregon, and currently teaches at Antioch University-LA in the master of fine arts program and at Highline Community College in Seattle. Her new book, "Cures Include Travel," is due out next year.

Horowitz has been the director of CWU's English as a Second Language program since 1990, and radio host of the "Blue Planet World Music Show" on KCWU radio in Ellensburg for seven years. A Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1968 to 1971, Horowitz has had many poems printed in small press publications. Recently, several pieces from his collection of short stories - "Donkeys, Dervishes and the Borderline: Sketches of an American's Experience in Pre-Revolutionary Iran" - were published in Glimpse Magazine.

The CWU English and foreign language departments, diversity education civic engagement centers and the office of international studies and programs are sponsoring the evening of readings. For more information, or for persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-1375 or (for hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.