Points of Entry wins travel writing award
News Release - September 24, 2004
contact:
Denise Waters
dwaters@cnu.edu
(757) 594-7331(NEWPORT NEWS, VA) — A Rwandan war travel memoir published in Points of Entry, a professional journal housed in Christopher Newport University's English department, has won a gold award and $500 cash prize from the Society of American Travel Writers.
"Mission to Rwanda," a personal memoir by Kari J. Bodnarchuk, a New England-based freelance travel writer, is about a reporter's mercy mission to aid victims of the Rwandan civil war. Points of Entry: Cross-Currents in Storytelling, a journal founded a edited by Terry Lee, CNU associate professor of English, published the work in its current 2004 issue.
"Traveling to Rwanda on my own, in the aftermath of a civil war, is nothing short of terrifying," Bodnarchuk writes in her narrative. "The airport [in Kigali] has bullet holes in the lounge windows, mortar holes across the floor, and several twitchy, anxious guards who eye me with veiled curiosity when I pass by. Am I really ready for this, I wonder?"
Bodnarchuk is the author of Rwanda: Country Torn Apart and Kurdistan: Region Under Siege . She has contributed to the Traveler's Tales series Her Fork in the Road , Australia , and Gutsy Women. She has also written for Time, Inc.'s LIFE: The Greatest Adventure of All.
Awards in the national Society of American Travel Writers Foundation competition were announced in September in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Points of Entry: Cross-Currents in Storytelling publishes narrative by journalists and scholars from across the disciplines to encourage narrative writing in journalism. More information is available at www.pointsofentry.org.
Christopher Newport University is a four-year public university in Newport News, Virginia. CNU enrolls nearly 4,800 students through its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Business. CNU's faculty and staff of nearly 1,000 focus on "students first," outstanding teaching, access and opportunity, and liberal learning. CNU is committed to leadership in the community and the Commonwealth.