lost souls

One of 4 illustrations for The Rumpus post, Journalists Invade Former Soviet Union.

Synopsis: It’s 1998. A California woman, a college senior, is working as an intern at the San Diego Union-Tribune. She spots a flyer in the lobby: REPORTERS NEEDED IN FORMER USSR. She decides to embark on a great adventure.

The jobs were not in Moscow but in the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, two countries I could safely say I knew nothing about… the newspaper doing the hiring, the English-language Baltic Times, (covered) the tiny Baltic countries of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

It was a warm day when I left, made even warmer by the fact that I was outfitted in full winter gear too bulky to pack… a copy of Gogol’s Dead Souls in my jacket pocket.