Category: Storytelling
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Choosing Local Leadership
From Peace Corps service, Ambassador Hill knew how fraught the process of picking someone else’s leadership could be. He’d seen it fail time and again
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Nonfiction Book on Careers in Diplomacy
Ben East’s nonfiction debut recounts how JFK’s bold experiment shaped diplomatic careers and influenced modern American diplomacy.
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Profile: Donald Bliss
Profiles in Service: Peace Corps Roots in American Diplomacy is now available and I’m reviving the practice of sharing memorable stories from the collection.
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A Night of Despair and a Voice of Hope
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This episode of SoftPower/FulStories, uncharacteristically in-the-moment, offers two hopeful voices paddling calmly, sanely, purposefully, across our current river of despair. The American dream ain’t dead.
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A Blood Meridian Screenplay
The screenplay will be a pistol report, a gunshot echoing across the naked landscape of America’s mythic past and shattered future. Rebuilt. Enduring.
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Seeking Peace Corps Images
What strikes you as a singular, foremost image to capture the spirit of Peace Corps service and U.S. diplomacy over the last half century?
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Down on Jupiter Wins 3rd!
Award-winning author reads from his short story Down on Jupiter. Who can resist Floridaman? Or rubber chickens? Or Marla Jean imagining her boyfriend’s back: “Tenderize me, baby.”
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Backstory: Hope and Tragedy
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Former diplomat Ben East tries his hand at podcasting when his nonfiction fails to take hold. Will fellow public servant Rob Batchelder bail him out? Can the Great Indian Bustard help?
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Education in Cameroon and Mali
Ambassador White’s story, and the energy with which she told it, revealed the first, cleanest line from Peace Corps service to successful diplomacy
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Profile: Michael Metrinko
Afghan Finance Minister Ghani steeped Metrinko and Peace Corps Director Vasquez in nostalgia from his years learning English and basketball with PCVs in Kabul
Ben East Books 