About

Ashley Shelby’s fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Slate, The New York Times Book Review, LitHub, Audubon, the Los Angeles Review, J Journal: New Writings on Social Justice, and other literary outlets. She's received the Red Hen Press Short Fiction Award, the Enizagam Short Story Award, the Third Coast Fiction Prize, and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize (always a bridesmaid). Her debut novel, South Pole Station, published in 2017, received praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Time, Library Journal, The Guardian, LitHub, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Bookpage. It was also named a New York Times Editor's Pick and an Indie Next Pick, as well as a Best Book of 2017 by Shelf Awareness. South Pole Station received the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Fiction. Her novelette, Muri (Radix Media, 2019), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award. Ordering information can be found here.

As a journalist, Ashley's original reporting on the Exxon Valdez litigation was published in The Nation and reprinted around the world. She is also the author of Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City, a work of narrative nonfiction praised by Salon, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Library Journal, and other media outlets.

Featured Work

South Pole Station: A Novel

2017

Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Fiction

One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Named a Best Book of the Year by Shelf Awareness and One of the Best Environmental Fiction Books of the Year by Earther

A warmhearted comedy of errors set in the world’s harshest place, Ashley Shelby's South Pole Station is a wry and witty debut novel about the courage it takes to band together when everything around you falls apart.

Do you have digestion problems due to stress? Do you have problems with authority? How many alcoholic drinks to you consume a week? Would you rather be a florist or a truck driver?

These are some of the questions that determine if you have what it takes to survive at South Pole Station, a place with an average temperature of -54°F and no sunlight for six months a year. Cooper Gosling has just answered five hundred of them. Her results indicate she is abnormal enough for Polar life.

Cooper’s not sure if this is an achievement, but she knows she has nothing to lose. Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, she’s adrift at thirty and―despite her early promise as a painter―on the verge of sinking her career. So she accepts her place in the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program and flees to Antarctica, where she encounters a group of misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. The only thing the Polies have in common is the conviction that they don’t belong anywhere else. Then a fringe scientist arrives, claiming climate change is a hoax. His presence will rattle this already-imbalanced community, bringing Cooper and the Polies to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.

A warmhearted comedy of errors set in the world’s harshest place, Ashley Shelby's South Pole Station is a wry and witty debut novel about the courage it takes to band together when everything around you falls apart.

Other Works

  • Honeymoons in Temporary Locations

    2024

  • Muri (Futures, #3)

    2019

  • Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City

    2003

Awards and Recognition

  • Hudson Booksellers Book of the Year (South Pole Station)
  • Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2017 (South Pole Station)
  • Lascaux Prize in Fiction
  • Enizagam Short Story Award
  • Red Hen Press Short Fiction Award
  • Third Coast Fiction Prize
  • Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, writing
  • Blacklock Nature Sanctuary Artist Fellowship