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Blair Braverman

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Blair Braverman
Born(1988-05-07)May 7, 1988
California, US
Occupationadventurer, dogsled racer, and nonfiction writer
Notable works
    • Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube
    • Small Game
Website
www.blairbraverman.com

Blair Braverman (born May 7, 1988) is an American adventurer, dogsled racer, musher, advice columnist and writer. She raced and completed the 2019 Iditarod, the 1,000 mi (1,600 km) dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.

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

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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[1] in California's Central Valley.[2][3] When she was ten, her family moved for a year to Norway for her father's research on the country's comprehensive smoking ban.[4] Braverman attended local schools.[5]

Returning to Davis, California, Braverman finished her schooling, including a term as an exchange student in Lillehammer, Norway.[2] Spending summers at Camp Tawonga, a Jewish camp near Yosemite,[1] she later attended a Scandinavian folk school in Mortenhals, a traditional one-year trade program, and studied dogsledding and winter survival.[3] 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.[2] She also spent two summers working as a dogsled guide on a glacier in Alaska.[6]

Braverman later earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa,[2] where she was also an Arts Fellow. She has been resident Fellow at Blue Mountain Center and the MacDowell Colony.[7]

She lives with her partner, Quince Mountain, in Mountain, Wisconsin.[6]

Adventure and writing career

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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.[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.[9][10] At the book's introduction, Publishers Weekly called Braverman the "21st-century feminist reincarnation of Jack London"[11] and the book was recommended by O, The Oprah Magazine.[2]

In 2022, she published a novel, Small Game.[12][13]

She has also written articles exploring gender, trans issues,[14] and online harassment.[15] She is a contributing editor for Outside Magazine, with a regular advice column called "Tough Love" dealing with relationships and the outdoors. Braverman's work has also appeared in The Atavist, BuzzFeed, and the Smithsonian, among others.[16][17]

Braverman has operated a kennel. She trained for the 2018 Iditarod[3][5] and completed the 2019 Iditarod, finishing 36th.[18][19] She was only the second Jewish woman to have completed the race.[20]

Media appearances

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In 2015, Braverman was featured on the public radio show This American Life as part of the episode "Game Face."[21]

Braverman appeared on a special episode of Discovery's Naked and Afraid in 2019, an experience she wrote about in detail for Outside.[22] Also in 2019, she was a guest on The Today Show. After her appearance, Harry Smith continued to follow her Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race effort; and the following week he featured a spot about of her team, who raised over $100,000 for Alaska public schools during a campaign called #igivearod.[23][24] The campaign continues to raise funds for causes in rural Alaska each year.

In 2021, she appeared on the New York Times' Sway podcast, where she and host Kara Swisher discussed survival and resilience.[25]

References

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  1. ^ a b Emily Burack (February 8, 2018). "Meet Blair Braverman: Jewish Dogsled Racer, Writer, and Overall Badass". Alma. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ "GIRL ON FIRE (AND ICE)". Brooklynrail.org, July–August 2016. 11 July 2016.
  5. ^ a b 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.
  6. ^ a b 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.
  7. ^ Blair Braverman (July 25, 2016). "What I've Learned From Having A Trans Partner". Buzzfeed Newsfeed. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017.
  8. ^ 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. ^ "Blair Braverman on her novel 'Small Game' about a survival reality tv show gone wrong". NPR. October 30, 2022.
  13. ^ Holland, Eva (2022-11-02). "After Appearing on 'Naked and Afraid,' Blair Braverman Wrote a Novel About a Survival Reality Show". Outside Online. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Braverman, Blair (4 October 2017). "On Being a Woman Alone in the Woods". Outside. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
  16. ^ "Articles by Blair Braverman | Smithsonian". www.smithsonianmag.com. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  17. ^ "Briefly Noted Book Reviews". The New Yorker. 25 September 2016. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  18. ^ "Blair Braverman - Musher Details - 2019 Iditarod - Iditarod". 13 January 2013.
  19. ^ "2019 Iditarod Standings". Iditarod. 13 January 2013. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  20. ^ Emily Burack (26 March 2019). "Blair Braverman is second Jewish woman to finish Iditarod". Jewish Ledger.
  21. ^ Blair Braverman (May 29, 2015). "200 Dog Night". This American Life (Podcast). WBEZ.
  22. ^ "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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  23. ^ Hanlon, Tegan (20 March 2019). "'It's kind of a miracle': #UglyDogs group helps raise more than $100K for Alaska schools during Iditarod". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
  24. ^ Smith, Harry (16 March 2019). "Rookie musher and her #UglyDogs raise money for students". Today. NBC Universal.
  25. ^ Kara Swisher (February 22, 2021). "Lessons on Resilience from Dogs and Dogsledders". Sway (Podcast). The New York Times.
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