Marissa Grunes is a literary scholar and science writer who studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. literature and culture, with a focus on environmental history and the Antarctic. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University and a PhD in English Literature from Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in Discover, Science, Atlas Obscura, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Review, and Nautilus among other venues. She lived for two summer seasons at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where she enjoyed biking across the sea ice and riding a snowmobile to the base of Mount Erebus.