Join us for a reading from “Cold Latitudes” by Rosemary McGuire at Bunnell Street Arts Center. “Cold Latitudes” is a memoir in essay form based on years of working in the Alaska Arctic and Antarctica. Rosemary McGuire was privileged to see first-hand worlds that few will ever know, while participating in cutting-edge research at high latitudes.

This is an in-person event and masks required. Free, donations are accepted.

Book Description:

Cold Latitudes is a memoir in essay form based on years of working in the Alaska Arctic and Antarctica. The author was privileged to see first-hand worlds that few will ever know, while participating in cutting-edge research at high latitudes. From solo voyages down the Yukon and part of the Northwest Passage, to working with humpback whales in the Southern Ocean, to chilling encounters with polar bears, Rosemary McGuire’s stories are told in spare, graceful prose. It is her friendships with local people, and with scientific researchers, that form the core of her experiences. Through these local contacts and traditional knowledge, she learns humility and a sense of wonder at the natural world, while at the same time coming to appreciate the gritty determination of the field researchers whose work she shares. Throughout, she examines human relationships with wilderness, and our growing effects on a fragile planet. And so, as she writes, “In the end, this is a love story for a threatened place.”

About the Author:

Rosemary McGuire is a life-long Alaskan. Her short story collection, The Creatures at the Absolute Bottom of the Sea, was published by the University of Alaska Press in 2015, and has since been anthologized multiple times. Her commercial fishing memoir, Rough Crossing, won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Prize in 2016, and was a finalist for the Women Writing the West WILLA award in 2018. Rosemary’s work has been supported by Rasmuson Foundation grants, and by residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her latest book, Cold Latitudes, nonfiction about her experiences in the Arctic and Antarctic wilderness, was published by the University of Alaska press in April 2021.