Ulrike Draesner

Ulrike Draesner sets out to bear witness to the beauty and fragility of the Arctic and to explore our relationship with this endangered habitat. Her journey takes her aboard small ships twice: to Spitsbergen in summer and through the fjords from Tromsø in winter.

The polar day and polar night create unique spaces for reflection and resonance. Amid the silence of the Arctic, what ordinarily goes unheard becomes perceptible: living creatures, the elements, and the atmosphere itself. With the senses heightened, travelers experience them directly—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In fresh, vivid prose deeply attuned to the natural world, Draesner explores what the Arctic means to us and how it can illuminate the question of who we are.

Ulrike Draesner is an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and poet. Following numerous international visiting professorships and poetry lectureships, she joined the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig as a professor in 2018. Her many honors include the 2020 German Prize for Nature Writing, awarded for the first essay from Radio Silence, and the 2021 Grand Prize of the German Literature Fund, honoring her body of work.

The event will take the form of a “dark reading,” held entirely without artificial light.