Join us as we welcome Blair Braverman for a reading and signing of her gripping new memoir WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE: CHASING FEAR AND FINDING HOME IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH.
Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: by the time she was 18, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to make a life for herself in the North, she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE charts Braverman’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Braverman faces down physical exhaustion—being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a white-out blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police—and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land. Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE captures the triumphs and perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.
Blair Braverman graduated from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where she was also an Arts Fellow. She has been a resident fellow at Blue Mountain Center and the MacDowell Colony and her work has appeared in Buzzfeed, The Atavist, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Orion, AGNI, High Country News, Waging Nonviolence, and on This American Life. She lives in Mountain, Wisconsin. A former wilderness guide and current competitive dogsledder, Braverman spent several years researching Arctic history, curating ethnographic museum exhibits for the Jensen Arctic Museum in Oregon, and conducting interviews about Arctic culture and the philosophy behind folk schools.
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