This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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Posts Tagged: trains
Searching for Sleeper Trains
There aren’t enough trains in Los Angeles. Not enough for me to sleep.
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The Life of the Mind: A Conversation with Elizabeth Scanlon
Elizabeth Scanlon discusses her debut full-length collection, Lonesome Gnosis, brains and trains, and poetry as prayer.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #82: Cecil Castellucci
The artistic oeuvre of Cecil Castellucci is dauntingly varied and vast. A singer/songwriter, a playwright, a librettist, she is also the author of many books, ranging from the picture book Grandma’s Gloves (winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal) to the YA novels Boy Proof, Tin Star, and the part comic, part prose novel […]
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An Ultimate Illustrated Fantasy Guide of Gilmore Girls Mashups
HOW AWESOME WOULD THESE MASHUPS BE? Oh well. Maybe next year.
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The Rumpus Interview with Danniel Schoonebeek
Danniel Schoonebeek discusses living a quiet life in the Catskills, the importance of travel, partying in the woods with poets, and how capitalism forces people to be cruel to each other.
...moreRiding On Trains With Pushkin
A city in Siberia is reportedly offering free rides on the underground to people who can recite at least two verses from any poem by Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s greatest poets.
...moreDetails Emerging for Amtrak Writing Residency
The Amtrak Writer Residency—an impromptu marketing program conceived of over Twitter—finally seems to be taking shape. After Alexander Chee mentioned his enjoyment of writing on trains, Amtrak jumped at the chance for some positive press and announced a residency program that would pair writers with sleeper compartments on long haul routes. Despite the creation of a […]
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Wes Anderson’s Train Love
In Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, train travel proves to be a difficult feat for the character Zero (Tony Revolori). Despite Zero’s train travel plight, Anderson himself enjoys a good train ride (the joy of such playing a prominent role in The Darjeeling Limited) and says of this form of travel, “It’s a calm, friendly, […]
...moreWriting on Trains
“Why do writers find the train such a fruitful work environment?” This is the question Jessica Gross sets out to answer in a recent piece published by The Paris Review, in which she describes her experience on a train to Chicago. The journey is bounded… I know when it will end… My main job is to […]
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Spotlight: Ben Nadler and Alyssa Berg
Writer Ben Nadler and illustrator Alyssa Berg team up on a graphic story titled “The Broadway Express.”
...moreThe 411 on reading and crying while commuting
Embrace those subway tears, urban commuters! Busses and trains are great places to read, but how do you cope when you’re on a crowded train making limited stops and the book you’re reading causes those tear ducts to flood? Preeti Chhibber at BookRiot has some anecdotes and solutions of her own on how to play […]
...moreMorning Coffee
Dash Shaw’s mini-comic for Vice is pretty great. Britain’s first full-scale high speed rail is up and running (and pretty looking!) In case you forgot, Big Picture’s photographs of 2009 completed today! As long as we’re recapping: the decade in logos. I’d really like to dedicate my life to something like figuring out how dinosaurs […]
...moreA Disobedient Girl
A first novel about a Sri Lankan servant girl brings to life a vivid world of class differences, and restores dignity to characters who are often shoved to the sidelines.
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