Stacy Carlson- The Gyre

An atmospheric journey into the far northern wilds, The Gyre spins one man’s search for meaning into an astonishing saga where adventure, folklore, and the Arctic converge. Arkady Afanasyev is a nineteenth-century Russian monk who aims to be the northernmost holy man in the world. Disgusted by “three-day pilgrims” flooding his White Sea monastery and diluting its sacred isolation, Arkady leaves it all behind and hitches a ride north to Spitsbergen, a remote island considered by most to be a no man’s land.

Equipped only with prayer books, Arkady sets off on foot away from the ills of the world to become the next in a long line of northern ascetics. As he struggles across the tundra, he’s haunted by regret, a long-lost family, and a chorus of Orthodox saints and Slavic pagan tricksters including hearth spirits, sea demons, and the Twelve Sisters of Scurvy. Amid their uncanny influence and the great, turning, harsh natural world, Arkady is brutally and deeply transformed.

The Gyre is a novel of spiritual aspiration, doomed ambition, and the unexpectedly rich layers of folklore present even in the most remote landscapes. Think The Revenant meets Angela Carter among the icebergs.

Stacy Carlson is a novelist, naturalist, and educator. Publishers Weekly called her debut novel, Among the Wonderful, “Intelligent, engrossing, and utterly unique.” Her new novel, The Gyre, won the Electric Book Award. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Tin House, Post Road, Inkwell, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships and residencies from the Mesa Refuge, The Arctic Circle, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Signal Fire. Stacy holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and her background also includes work as a historical ecologist, fish cannery worker, hot springs caretaker, and hiking guide in Big Sur. She grew up between mountains and sea in the Pacific Northwest and has lived in New England, New York, Northern California, and the Upper Midwest.

Stacy’s creative work is deeply concerned with wild nature. She was only 23 miles away from Mt. St. Helens when it erupted in 1980, and she credits that experience as the reason she became a writer. Once, on the Canning River north of the Brooks Range in Alaska, she watched a wolf travel across a vast landscape under the midnight sun. She has never shaken the feeling that the wolf, free in its wild, ample territory, is one of the most important things she’ll see in her lifetime. This experience drives Stacy’s writing in that it catalyzed a belief that reverence for truly wild places is vital to the human psyche and a critical component in achieving collective ecological health.

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