In a presentation entitled “Sailing Svalbard: The Last Imaginary Place,” Maine fiction writer Cynthia Reeves will share highlights of her Arctic travels and inspirations for her latest novel, The Last Whaler. Reeves’ narrated slideshow will take place on Wednesday, September 18, at 6 p.m. The event serves as a book launch party, and refreshments will be provided.
Reeves’ lifelong interest in the Arctic began in childhood reading tales of doomed Arctic explorers. But it was her participation in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition, which sailed Svalbard’s western shores, as well as two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyen, a trip around Iceland’s Ring Road, and a second voyage circumnavigating Svalbard aboard the icebreaker MV Ortelius that have inspired her writing since then.
The program will include Reeves’ photographs of the Arctic shores, massive glaciers, and glacier calving. She will also discuss life aboard an icebreaker and exploring an old whaling station littered with bones from hundreds of beluga whales.
Cynthia Reeves is the author of three books of fiction: the novel The Last Whaler (2024); the novel in stories Falling Through the New World (2024), winner of Gold Wake Press’s Fiction Award; and the novella Badlands (2007), winner of Miami University Press’s Novella Prize. Reeves earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr and Rosemont Colleges. She lives with her husband in Camden.
