Cruise lines partner with land-based chefs and brands to bring familiar, trendy relevance they cannot create on their own.  Cunard Line has their share of those partnerships as well.  Still, a recent addition to the Cunard Line stable of stars looks to be a continuation of enriching activities found aboard their elegant ships.  Unlikely as the idea may seem at first glance, cartoonists on board Queen Mary 2 during select Transatlantic Crossings look like far more than something to fill time on long itineraries with few ports.

This year, during select Transatlantic Crossings from June to November, celebrated cartoonists of acclaimed magazine The New Yorker will host exclusive drawing sessions, workshops, hands-on demonstrations and caption contests for passengers.

Our goal at Cunard is to offer extraordinary experiences to our guests,and we look forward to welcoming The New Yorker team onto these four Queen Mary 2 voyages. –

, senior vice president, Cunard North America

Cartoonists Onboard Will Include:

• Emily Flake will be part of the July 20, 2018 (M827) voyage. Flake has been cartooning for The New Yorker since 2008 and is also the author of Mama Tried: Dispatches from the Seamy Underbelly of Modern Parenting.
• Matt Diffee is set to join the June 10 (M821) and November 11, 2018 (M843) Crossings. Author of Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People and the editor of three volumes of The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw and Never Will See in The New Yorker, Diffee has been contributing cartoons to The New Yorker since 1999. His work has also appeared in Time, The Huffington Post, The Believer and Texas Monthly. Diffee received the Silver Reuben Award for best single-panel cartoonist of the year and he was recently named Chairman of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society.
• David Sipress will join the transatlantic voyage departing August 26, 2018 (M832). Sipress’ work has appeared in the Boston Phoenix, Time, Parade, Playboy, Funny Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, Gastronomica, and Shambhala Sun. Sipress also lectures on the art of the cartoon and has published eight collections of his work. In 2016, Sipress was awarded the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Gag Cartooning.
• Ben Schwartz will be joining the October 7, 2018 Crossing (M838A). Schwartz has been a contributing cartoonist for The New Yorker since 2012. A man of many trades, Schwartz also works as an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, where he uses art to help educate future physicians on how to provide compassionate and patient-centric care.

The New Yorker, known for its single-panel cartoons, has offered a signature mix of news, culture, and the arts since its founding in 1925.
Cunard Line has been at it for a bit longer, sailing since 1839.