Orion Magazine & Person/Place/Thing with Randy Cohen team up once again to present a conversation with author Elizabeth Rush. Rush’s new book The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth explores themes of climate change, motherhood, and Antarctic exploration while following the travels and workaday lives of fifty-seven scientists and crew aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, as they make their way to Thwaites Glacier. Randy and Elizabeth will discuss what her research (and her own trip to Antarctica) taught her about the history of polar exploration and motherhood in an age of climate change, through the lenses of her chosen person, place, and thing.

About the Speaker

Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth and Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Rush’s work has appeared in a wide range of publications from the New York Times to Orion and Guernica. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Metcalf Institute. She lives with her husband and son in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.