Karen Joyce: Frozen Hard and Thawed Out

A storm has been walloping Antarctica for the past few days. Karen Joyce, intrepid to the end, has ventured out to take this photograph. I wish I’d been there…

The contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice lead fascinating lives. From time to time I’ll track them down and find out what they are doing.

Karen, who contributed a hilarious essay, “The Day It Rained Chickens,” to Antarctica: Life on the Iceis currently in McMurdo, as she has been for the past 17 years during the austral summer. She will be joining us live from the Antarctic for our virtual book tour on November 29.

“It's strange how much I love this place, even though I

am absolutely the wrong body type for Antarctica. Cold places select

for gigantism, for a ratio of surface area to interior space that

maximizes the latter, and I am a wee peanut of a woman. I have been

frozen hard and thawed out so many times, I ought to be a quaking

gelatinous mess by now.”

Karen should be working on her second novel, The Winter of My Discount

Tent but instead, this is what she reports from the ice:

“I dream

about missing airplanes, traveling in unrecognizable countries, always

enroute somewhere and there is always trouble. I suffer this job for 10 hours a day and in the evening I paint, teach

exercise classes, write and drink single-malt Scotch. For the first

time in my life, I count the days till I can leave, but I don't know

where I want to go. That's it in a nutshell.”