The great thing about social media is that it helps bubble up conversations that you otherwise wouldn't have been privy to. I am the Director of Public Relations for Amtrak, and my group manages the Amtrak Residency Program. So Alexander Chee had mentioned in this interview that he loves riding on the train and wished that Amtrak had a residency for writers, and I and many other writers thought this was an incredible concept and tweeted to Amtrak that we would like to actually make this a reality. Jessica Gross: I guess two Decembers ago I was sitting in a cafeteria doing some work the day after Christmas with a friend of mine and came across an interview that the writer Alexander Chee had done with PEN, the organization for writers’ freedom of speech. My name is Jessica Gross and I’m a writer and the first recipient of the Amtrak Writers’ Residency. There are little cups, little towels, a tiny bar of soap. Next to one of the chairs is a seat whose top flips up to reveal a toilet and above that is a folding sink, something like a Murphy bed with a spigot. Between them is a small table that you can slide up and out its top is a chessboard. Jessica Gross: I am in a little sleeper cabin on a train to Chicago. Read Jessica Gross’ essay in The Paris Review Daily, “ Writing the Lake Shore Limited.” But how has it been for a writer taking part in the residency? Why did Amtrak decide to pursue it and how did it all come together?Īmtrak’s first resident writer Jessica Gross and the program’s director Julia Quinn take us through one writer’s residency and how and why Amtrak set the program in motion. How have writers responded? Well, 16,000 applied in the first year. There’s a limit of two long-distance routes each way, and Amtrak works with the writers and its own ticket sales to schedule the writers throughout the year. Just beginning its second year, the Amtrak Residency for Writers gives each of its 24 residents the round trip of their choice. Another writer tweeted to Amtrak: “How about it?” Amtrak said, “Sounds good,” and the Amtrak Residency for Writers was born. In fact, in an interview one writer who so loved writing on trains remarked that Amtrak should create a writer’s residency. I’m hardly alone in my attachment to train travel. For train travel, the journey is as important as the arrival. Where does Anna meet Count Vronsky, after all? All right, it’s really when the train reaches the station but, it was Anna’s long conversation with his mother on the train that set up the fateful meeting. It could also be all those books and films with pivotal moments that take place on a train. In my world, long-distance train travel is imbued with romanticism-it could be the pace of travel, the sound of the wheels and the whistle, the slight sway of the cars. The view from the window of the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited.
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