HYDE PARK — University of Chicago student Korey Garibaldi’s office will be a train car for the next year, he found out Wednesday after being selected for Amtrak’s residency program for writers.
Garibaldi is finishing his doctorate in history at the university and is working on a book, “Different Trains,” with 2008 alum Ben Shepard.
“In short, it is a combined travelogue and international history of the present as seen through trains,” Garibaldi said. “It is organized around six different long train rides around the world, including a six-week train trip Ben and I took through Japan and China this summer with two other U. of C. alumni.”
As one of 24 writers selected from 16,000 applicants, Garibaldi will be able to spend the next year writing from trains crisscrossing the country.
He said the writing sample that earned him the seat was a chapter from his dissertation about the push for more progressive and positive depictions of minorities and women as World War II erupted.
Garibaldi, who is originally from Minneapolis, said he hoped the attention the residency had attracted would help boost interest in cultural policy.
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