Blair Braverman is an author, dogsledder, and adventurer who uses innovative storytelling to make the outdoors accessible. Her journalism and essays have appeared in Smithsonian, The Guardian, This American Life, and elsewhere, and she is a regular correspondent for Outside magazine.
She is currently training for the Iditarod, a 1000-mile dogsled race across Alaska.
Iowa Arts Fellow • MacDowell Fellow
Blue Mountain Center Fellow • Outdoors 30 Under 30
"A NEW CLASSIC"
"BORDERS ON SUBLIME"
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north.
By the time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—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 paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.