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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – AUGUST 1, 2007
Collaborative Website Showcases Bay Area Columnists

TenCarTrain.Com, the creation of a handful of students and graduates of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA, is a collaborative and novel enterprise: an opportunity for each writer to create a weekly column on whatever topic she or he prefers. The site can be viewed at http://www.tencartrain.com .

“The idea for TenCarTrain sprang from an offhand comment during one of our classes,” says project manager Jason Sattler. “We were studying a couple of nonfiction pieces that had started off as magazine columns, and Erich mentioned that someday he’d like to be a columnist, and Janet suggested that if we worked together we could each have a weekly column on a blog space, and I began coordinating it. Within a couple of weeks we were up and running with a starting group of seven writers.” The group expects soon to have a regular staff of ten – two for each weekday – with two “pinch-hitter” writers available on standby.

The name TenCarTrain is a nod to BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), many students’ route to the suburban St. Mary’s campus – BART uses a ten-car train for its busiest and most popular routes. “Many of the columns have a distinct Bay Area flavor, so we wanted a name that would reflect that,” says Sattler.

TenCarTrain’s logo and design were created for the group by web-designer, graphic artist and photographer April Barrett. April’s company, fstopdesign, built TenCarTrain and fixes any glitches or delays with service, both on weekdays and weekends.

As far as the group has been able to ascertain, none of the hundreds of other undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs in the U.S. has spawned a project like TenCarTrain. “Most writing programs have some sort of literary magazine, but that doesn’t really accommodate the weekly-column format,” says Sattler. “And yet some of our favorite authors are columnists – from Jon Carroll and Neva Chonin here in the Bay Area to national icons like Garrison Keillor and Molly Ivins. We wanted to create something that would give us the chance to emulate writers like these.”

The current lineup of TenCarTrain includes:

Monday:   
This American Sandwich, by Alicia Bleuer. Alicia is an alumnus of the University of Iowa and the St. Mary’s College of California's MFA program in nonfiction writing. She is currently living in San Francisco but will head back to the Midwest soon to begin an MA in humanities at the University of Chicago. This American Sandwich explores and evaluates the experience of sandwich eating and maybe a little bit about what the portable, hand-held foods we eat say about American culture. Thus far, her pieces have discussed pet mortality, baseball, polyamory, large corporate coffee chains, and Thanksgiving.

Dosmasks Weekly, by Jason Sattler. Jason is a former copywriter, comedy writer and high school teacher. He was a founder of the Communist Manifestival, one of the first PDF magazines, and has written for MTV Online and Flavorpill. Dosmasks Weekly features Sattler’s stories based on or inspired by the drawings of artist Jeff Hurlow.

Tuesday:   
Tuesdays with Damore(y): Unbottled Wine Weekly, by Kevin Damore. Kevin graduated from the University of Portland with a degree in Journalism that helped him land a job as a Sports Producer for The Oregonian’s website. After a couple of years working in Portland, Damore came to Saint Mary’s, where he earned his MFA in Creative Non-Fiction writing. He is currently living in the Bay Area and working as a freelance writer. Tuesdays with Damore(y): Unbottled Wine Weekly is dedicated to men’s issues and the Andrew W.K.-inspired pursuit of pure fun and total love.

Hungry Hypos, by Jean-Pierre LaCrampe. JP is a 25-year old living in San Francisco. His work can be seen at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Instant City and Howl, an anthology of humor. Please send praising comments to jeanpierre.lacrampe@gmail.com. Send scathing reviews or criticism to fakeaddress@hotmail.com. JP says, “If I had to describe Hungry Hypos in one word, that word would be: indescribable.”

Wednesday:   
Poison Arrow Press, by John Prindle. John is a writer, illustrator and photographer currently living in the East Bay.  Poison Arrow Press is his weekly column, and materializes every Wednesday with fiction that is usually dark, strange and fantastic: concerned most often with other worlds, both here on Earth and abroad. The Press also features nonfiction articles from time to time.

Thursday:   
Occidental Drive-By, by Erich Miller. Erich survived a fifteen-year stint as a San Francisco social worker, and is now a second-year Nonfiction student in the creative writing program at St. Mary’s. Occidental Drive-By is his notes and reflections – personal and otherwise – on life in Northern California.

Friday:   
Cinema Toast, by Janet W. Hardy. Janet has lost count of her careers, but her last one was as a sex writer/educator (The Ethical Slut, The Compleat Spanker, Radical Ecstasy), and her next one, she hopes, will be as a wealthy and beloved author and college professor. Toward that end, she is halfway through her MFA program in Nonfiction at St. Mary’s. Cinema Toast is a weekly exploration of the reliable pleasures: movies and food.

For more information: Jason Sattler, 323-839-8055, jason@dosmasks.com .