John Flynn (Moldova 1993–95) has a new short story in the inaugural issue of Quiddity Journal, published out of Springfield College-Benedictine University in Illinois. The story, “The Four-Cent Tip” can be accessed online at www.sci.edu/quiddity. There is an audio version of the story also available on the site.
     John also has a short story online at Green Hills Literary Lantern out of Truman State University. Titled “Blow Out All The Candles” it’s about a honeymoon couple on the road during the ’50s when gasoline cost 19 cents per gallon. You can access it at ghll.truman.edu

Hodding Carter IV (Kenya 1984–86) has a new book, Off the Deep End (Algonquin), about his life as a competitive swimmer. Carter, who’s grandfather was the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper publisher of The Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and his father, also a writer, was the State Department spokesman for President Jimmy Carter’s administration, is a contributing writer for Outside magazine and is the author of five nonfiction books. His article for Outside, on which this book is based, won a Lowell Thomas award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.
     Carter had been an NCAA Division III All-American and national champion swimmer at Kenyon College. After graduating with a degree in English literature, he was accepted by the Peace Corps. Although his heart told him to go for the Olympic gold, his father made it clear that he would be keeping his promise to the Peace Corps.
     “My father had paid for my whole life up to this point and bankrolled those countless summer days when I swam five hours daily but did nothing else,” Carter writes. “I’d had only one real summer job my entire spoiled life, and my time had finally come to do something other than swim.” So he joined the Peace Corps.
     “I was a weak kid with a strong imagination, and I could feel the weight of the gold medals and hear the unreachable notes of our national anthem nearly every night before drifting off to sleep,” Carter writes in Off the Deep End.
     Carter is now back swimming competitivly and last December, he swam fast enough to rank second in the world in the 50 short-course meter freestyle and the 50 short-course meter butterfly for his age group (45–49). Off the Deep End is his account of a journey that he hopes will carry him to the 2012 Olympics.

Here’s a Peace Corps writer success story. Sydney Kling (South Africa 2001–03) wrote and published Inside Outside: A Retiree’s Peace Corps Journal from South Africa and then she took the $12,000 she made from the sales (about 80,000 Rand) back to South Africa. As she wrote me, “Not very much on the scale of what others are doing but they were very appreciative and I was able to say that such and such person actually received the funds. I divided it among three different home-based volunteer care groups and was able to deposit the money in the local bank in the account of Bishop Henry for Hope for Africa.”