Praise for

The Blue Hours

“A magnificent debut. I devoured every page of this gorgeously written, deeply researched, and riveting account of one woman’s adventures in Antarctica, and the explorers who preceded her.”

— Melissa Febos, acclaimed memoirist and national bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

“Antarctica feels reborn in these pages…[in] writing so haunting, formidable, and transportive that it’s almost impossible to believe that this masterpiece of a book is her debut.”

— Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of An Immense World

A sweeping memoir of life in Antarctica, and pushing past the boundaries of the known world and your own limits.

Humans have romanticized Antarctica for centuries. To Stephanie Krzywonos, Antarctica, and its well-known tragedies and hidden histories, are places to search for answers and belonging—and something larger than herself.

Hungry for the sublime and haunted over her best friend’s tragic death, Stephanie leaves her entire life behind to live in Antarctica as an ordinary worker and tests the limits of survival.

Over six polar summers and one astonishing winter, she encounters adorable penguins, colossal glaciers, and whiteout storms. In old explorers’ huts, the traces of ghosts show the extremes to which people are willing to go to find peace. In this rare account of an Antarctic winter, the sun disappears for over four months, and Stephanie reckons with Antarctica’s complicated past alongside her own grief and desire to live—all while auroras, the moon, sunrise, and darkness itself nourish her. Throughout, Stephanie also traces the stories of female, queer, and BIPOC explorers often left out of the annals of Antarctic history to ask: Who truly belongs in Antarctica, a place that has come to symbolize despair and hope in a rapidly warming planet? And in a wounded world filled with so much loss, is healing even possible?

An exquisite blend of memoir, history, criticism, and science, The Blue Hours illuminates hidden histories of life on “the Ice” and gives voice to the natives—seals and whales, ice and rock—that make up the extraordinary body of Antarctica herself.

“It’s necessary to pass through a good deal of darkness to appreciate fully a small amount of light.” — The Blue Hours

This book was born…

…from a searing memory in Antarctica: I was watching a penguin walk south in the snow, possibly toward its death, and as I stood there, feeling powerless to help it, painful memories of my failure to save someone I loved flooded me. In the autumn of 2020, as I sat down at a kitchen table I’d moved into a closet so I could write, I knew I couldn’t explain that moment, or how precious and astounding Antarctica had become to me, without sharing what went on inside of me while I was there. After over six years of writing and research, I’m excited to share with you the kind of book that I wanted to read about Antarctica but did didn’t exist yet, one that depicted Antarctica as alive instead of “barren,” and one that held a chorus of voices from the margins of Antarctic histories, human and nonhuman, in its pages.

Thanks for reading!

Rave reviews…

“Antarctica feels reborn in these pages—unshackled from the tired myths of heroism that have long defined her, resounding with once-silenced voices, and ready for a new era of myth- and meaning-making. Krzywonos accomplishes all of that with writing so haunting, formidable, and transportive that it’s almost impossible to believe that this masterpiece of a book is her debut. This is a stunning book.”

— Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of An Immense World

“In The Blue Hours, Stephanie Krzywonos goes to Antarctica seeking salvation. What she discovers is that there is no geographic cure, only a geographic shift. Antarctica is not just a place; it is a force, and it’s in relationship with her that Stephanie’s life changes. Artfully woven and deftly constructed, The Blue Hours takes its rightful place on the shortlist of literary memoirs about Antarctica by women, and the even shorter list of works that reveal a queer, nonwhite, feminist perspective on the continent and its place in the human imaginary.”

— Gretchen Legler, author of Woodsqueer and On the Ice

“Antarctica has always called to the ones who can hear her, and The Blue Hours perfectly captures the haunting allure of the frozen extremes. Krzywonos’s intimate and vulnerable memoir explores Antarctica’s past and present through the lens of her own journey to find peace within immense grief. Braiding natural history, philosophy, and science against the backdrop of the strangest community on earth, The Blue Hours brings to life the magic of a place most humans will never see.”

— Tessa Hulls, Pulitzer Prize-winning author/artist of Feeding Ghosts

“I started The Blue Hours with a deep curiosity about Antarctica—a part of the world few people get to see—and finished with profound new understandings of how we can heal in the face of unimaginable loss. Stephanie Krzywonos elegantly interweaves her experience working in our planet’s southernmost realm with meticulous research into Antarctica’s history and environmental vulnerability, all while reflecting on her journey through grief. The result is a memoir that is as moving as it eye-opening, and a debut that must not be missed.”

— Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria and The Last Catastrophe

“A magnificent debut. I devoured every page of this gorgeously written, deeply researched, and riveting account of one woman’s adventures in Antarctica, and the explorers who preceded her.”

— Melissa Febos, acclaimed memoirist and national bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

“The Blue Hours is that liminal space of dusk and dawn and contains all—beauty and brutality, intimacy and ultimacy as does Krzywonos’ ineffably meaningful memoir. Once I started reading, I wanted to do nothing else. The Blue Hours is profound, exquisitely composed, a ritual of personal and planetary healing, and stirs the soul to realizations uniquely achievable through memoir. The work makes a case for the personhood and rights of humans, penguins, lichen, ice, Antarctica, land—all of whom are nature, as it opens a way to hear what nature is saying.”

— Dr. Jane Caputi, author of Call Your “Mutha”: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene

“A story of rupture and healing, The Blue Hours is a profound journey through personal and polar darkness into the light. Krzywonos gives us a view of Antarctica and the people who survive on the ice that is both intimate and sweeping. Love suffuses every page.”

— Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast

“The Blue Hours is a marvelous book. Marvellous: causing wonder and awe. Here are paradoxes that reveal wisdom deeper than rational thought can reach: In the most desperate darkness, there is starlight. In the most brilliant day, there are terrifying shadows. In perhaps the most sterile place on the planet, there is an unbearable urgency for life—in polar explorers, improbable penguins, huskies frozen in mid-howl and, especially, in the author’s own heart, also howling like hurricane-force winds. I thought this was a truly wonderful book—lavishly researched, jaggedly honest, compelling, and beautiful.”

— Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Wild Comfort

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