Additional information
by Abi Andrews (Author)
This is a new kind of nature writing -- one that crosses fiction with science writing and puts gender politics at the center of the landscape.
Erin, a 19-year-old girl from middle England, is traveling to Alaska on a journey that takes her through Iceland, Greenland, and across Canada. She is making a documentary about how men are allowed to express this kind of individualism and personal freedom more than women are, based on masculinist ideas of survivalism and the shunning of society: the "Mountain Man." She plans to culminate her journey with an experiment: living in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, a la Thoreau, to explore it from a feminist perspective.
The book is a fictional time capsule curated by Erin, comprising of personal narrative, fact, anecdote, images and maps, on subjects as diverse as The Golden Records, Voyager 1, the moon landings, the appropriation of Native land and culture, Rachel Carson, The Order of The Dolphin, The Doomsday Clock, Ted Kaczynski, Valentina Tereshkova, Jack London, Thoreau, Darwin, Nuclear war, The Letters of Last Resort and the pill, amongst many other topics.
The Word for Woman Is Wilderness is bold and inventive, both adventure story and statement, that introduces a fierce new talent in Abi Andrews.
Author Biography
Abi Andrews is a writer from the Midlands, England. She studied Creative Writing at Goldsmiths college in London, and her work has been published in Five Dials, Caught by the River, The Clearing, The Dark Mountain Project, Tender and other journals, along with a pamphlet published with Goldsmiths Shorts. Her debut novel The Word for Woman Is Wilderness was originally published by Serpent's Tail in February 2018 and Hoffmann und Campe in October 2018.
