Program for Sunday, August 11, 2019

“A Virtual Trip to Antarctica” with Elizabeth Bradfield

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of four books, most recently Toward Antarctica. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere. She works as a naturalist/guide locally as well as on expedition ships and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.

Toward Antarctica documents and queries Elizabeth’s work as a guide on ships in Antarctica, offering an incisive insider’s vision that challenges traditional tropes of The Last Continent. She uses photographs, compressed prose, and short poems to examine our relationship to remoteness, discovery, expertise, awe, labor, temporary societies, “pure” landscapes, and tourism’s service economy. A complicated love letter, Toward Antarctica offers a unique view of one of the world’s most iconic wild places.