Hotshot a life on fire
From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life--of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the contours of what it meant to be female-bodied in a male-dominated profession. By the time they were 19, Selby had been...
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Atlantic Monthly Press,
2025.
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| Edition: | First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life--of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the contours of what it meant to be female-bodied in a male-dominated profession. By the time they were 19, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Soon immersed in the world of firefighting and its arcana--from specialized tools named for the fire pioneers who invented them, to the back-breaking labor of racing against time to create firebreaks--Selby began to find an internal balance. Then, after two years of ragtag contract firefighting, Selby joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots. Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people--almost entirely men--who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Marked out in a sea of machismo, Selby was simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, and Hotshot deftly parses the odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism she experienced on her fire crews, and how, when challenged, it resulted in a violent closing of ranks that excluded her from the work she'd come to love. Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire, followed by years of research into the science and history of fire, Hotshot also reckons with our fraught stewardship of the land--how federal fire policy is maladapted to the realities of fire-prone landscapes and how it has led to ever more severe fire seasons. |
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| Item Description: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| Physical Description: | ix, 326 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| ISBN: | 9780802149497 0802149499 |
| Author Notes: | River Selby is a former hotshot and wildland firefighter, a writer, and a nonbinary person. They hold an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University; they are currently pursuing their PhD. They were the recipient of the Emerging Writer's Prize for Fiction from Boulevard Magazine for their story, "How Certain Fires Burn." Their writing has appeared in the New Ohio Review , Bellevue Literary Review , Vox , and High Country News . They currently live in Tallahassee, Florida. |
