Blair Braverman

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Blair Braverman
Born1988 (age 32–33)
California
Occupationadventurer, dogsled racer, and nonfiction writer
CitizenshipUnited States
Notable worksWelcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube'
Website
www.blairbraverman.com

Blair Braverman (born 1988) is an American adventurer, dogsled racer, musher, advice columnist and nonfiction writer. She raced and completed the 2019 Iditarod, the 1,000 mi (1,600 km) dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.

As a journalist, Braverman writes about gender and adventuring. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, BuzzFeed, the Atavist, Orion, AGNI, and High Country News — and she has appeared on the podcast Sway and the radio program This American Life.[1] Since 2020, she has hosted an advice column called Tough Love for Outside magazine.

In 2016, the Outdoor Industry Association selected Braverman as one of Outdoor 30 Under 30 list and Publishers Weekly called Braverman a "21st century feminist reincarnation of Jack London."

Background[]

Braverman was born on May 7, 1988, the daughter of research scientist Jana Kay Slater and university professor and author Marc Braverman. She was raised Jewish[2] in California's Central Valley.[3][4] When she was ten, her family moved for a year to Norway for her father's research on the country's comprehensive smoking ban.[5] Braverman attended local schools.[6]

Returning to Davis, California, Braverman finished her schooling, including a term as an exchange student in Lillehammer, Norway.[3] Spending summers at Camp Tawonga, a Jewish camp near Yosemite,[2] she later attended a Scandinavian folk school in Mortenhals, a traditional one-year trade program, and studied dogsledding and winter survival.[4] She returned to the United States in 2007, graduating from Colby College in 2011. While in school, she had articles published locally and nationally, in magazines and newspapers.[3] She also spent two summers working as a dogsled guide on a glacier in Alaska.[7]

Braverman later earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa,[3] where she was also an Arts Fellow. She has been resident Fellow at Blue Mountain Center and the MacDowell Colony.[1]

She lives with her partner, Quince Mountain, in Mountain, Wisconsin.[7]

Adventure and writing career[]

In 2015, Braverman was featured on This American Life on the "Game Face" episode segment entitled 200 Dog Night.[6][7] She was selected as one of the inaugural class of the Outdoor 30 Under 30 list by the Outdoor Industry Association in 2016.[7]

In 2016, Braverman published Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, a memoir of her childhood and northern adventures as well as a study of the ways men and women cope with harsh environments — and each other.[6][8] Braverman discussed the perils not only from blizzards, isolation and wild animals, but also from sexism and violence faced by women adventurers in a male-dominated field — distinguishing the memoir from travel narratives and self-discovery memoirs.[8][9][10] At the books introduction, Publishers Weekly called Braverman the "21st-century feminist reincarnation of Jack London"[11] and the book was recommended by O, The Oprah Magazine.[3]

She has also written articles exploring gender, such as What I've Learned From Having A Trans Partner, which was published in BuzzFeed in 2016[12] and on-line harassment in When I was scared, my gun-owning neighbors helped me feel safe, published in The Guardian.[13] Braverman's work has appeared in The Atavist, BuzzFeed, and the Smithsonian, among others.[14][15]

Braverman has operated a kennel. She trained for the 2018 Iditarod[4][6] and completed the 2019 Iditarod, finishing 36th.[16][17] She was only the second Jewish woman to have completed the race.

[18]


Participating in an episode of the reality series Naked and Afraid, Braverman received only a knife and a Pulaski Axe.[19]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Blair Braverman (July 25, 2016). "What I've Learned From Having A Trans Partner". Buzzfeed Newsfeed.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Emily Burack (February 8, 2018). "Meet Blair Braverman: Jewish Dogsled Racer, Writer, and Overall Badass". Alma.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Collins, Stephen (Fall 2016). "Tough Sledding". Colby Magazine. Waterville, Maine: Colby College. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Mumford, Tracy (July 13, 2016). "Wild, free and freezing: Blair Braverman's life in the north". Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Public Radio. Archived from the original on 4 May 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  5. ^ "GIRL ON FIRE (AND ICE)". Brooklynrail.org, July-August 2016. 11 July 2016.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Driver, Alice (6 July 2016). "Mush, mush, mush! How husky racing saved an author and inspired a memoir". The Guardian. London, England. Archived from the original on 10 July 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Berry, Erica (July 18, 2016). "The Rumpus Interview with Blair Braverman". The Rumpus. Archived from the original on 19 July 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b Dickey, Bronwen (2016-08-05). "A Woman's Love Affair With the North Is Both Travelogue and Memoir". The New York Times. New York City, New York. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  9. ^ Miller, Pamela (July 5, 2016). "Review: Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman". The Star Tribune. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Archived from the original on 7 May 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  10. ^ Stokes, Elisabeth Fairfield (November 14, 2016). "A Conversation With Blair Braverman, Author of 'Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube'". Pacific Standard. Santa Barbara, California: Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy. ISSN 1941-5672. Archived from the original on 4 June 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  11. ^ "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube". Vancouver Public Library. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. May 9, 2016. Archived from the original on 4 June 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  12. ^ Braverman, Blair. "What I've Learned From Having A Trans Partner". BuzzFeed. New York City, New York. Archived from the original on 4 June 2017. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  13. ^ Braverman, Blair (22 September 2016). "When I was scared, my gun-owning neighbors helped me feel safe". The Guardian. London, England. Archived from the original on 23 May 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  14. ^ "Articles by Blair Braverman | Smithsonian". www.smithsonianmag.com. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  15. ^ "Briefly Noted Book Reviews". The New Yorker. 25 September 2016. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  16. ^ "Blair Braverman - Musher Details - 2019 Iditarod - Iditarod".
  17. ^ "2019 Iditarod Standings". Iditarod. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  18. ^ Emily Burack (26 March 2019). "Blair Braverman is second Jewish woman to finish Iditarod". Jewish Ledger.
  19. ^ "Everything on 'Naked and Afraid' Is Real—and I Lived It". 17 March 2020. Archived from the original on March 17, 2020. Retrieved March 17, 2020.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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