Cirrus@Austlit

'Jesse Blackadder (1964–2020) was twice awarded  the prestigious Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) Arts Fellowship, travelling south to Davis Station in 2011 to work on her novel Chasing the Light and again to Mawson Station in 2018. Conversations with her in late 2019 fed many of the first thoughts about the possibility of an Antarctic edition of Griffith Review: her introduction connected Griffith Review with the team at AAD, which ultimately enabled this publishing partnership.

'This memoir combines private diary entries from her second voyage south, in late 2018, with published blogs from the same period. This voyage – longer than her first – saw her travel with and collaborate across various projects with Jane Allen, another AAD Arts Fellow, including a series of YA novels and a television script.

'Through this short memoir’s combination of exploration and meditation, it’s possible to glimpse – through an intimate and generous window – some of the realities of the experience of living and working at the end of the Earth; of distance, silence, loneliness and creativity, and an extraordinary demonstration of the process of transforming that life, that experience, into words that can be shared with readers in what might be thought of as the ‘real world’ beyond.

'Thanks to Jesse’s partner, Andi Davey, for permission to collate and share some of Jesse’s words in this way.' (Introduction)