Craft Essays
The Permission to Write Small
The Sky, the Earth, the Sea, the Soul
CMarie Fuhrman and Ese Erheriene offer subversive poetry. Teresa Baker and Midy Aponte-Vargas reflect on advocating for diversity and justice. Holly Chen evokes the power of small moments. And an excerpt from Dorothy Pilley’s 1935 classic, Climbing Days on early women-only expeditions.
Book Review — A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change
By: Amanda Vestergaard | Edited by Andrea Bagnato, Marco Ferrari, and Elisa Pasqual (Columbia University Press, 2018) If national borders are mapped onto natural geographical boundaries, what happens when those boundaries begin to melt? Published in 2019, A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change is a beautifully produced volume describing
Interview — Only Barely Still – On Women and Wilderness
By Kang-Chun (KC) Cheng | This interview previously appeared in the June 2026 Newsletter Kang-Chun (KC) Cheng interviews Belgian photographer Catherine Lemblé about her photo book Only Barely Still – On Women and Wilderness, which reimagines the Arctic through the lives of the women living there, with a particular focus
On Writing the Altered Landscape
On Writing the Altered Landscape
Kang-Chun Cheng interviews Catherine Lemblé about her photos of Svalbard, Anne Haven McDonnell shares a backcountry-skiing poem, Amanda Vestergaard reviews A Moving Border, Katie Ives follows lines by Nan Shepherd, and Radha Marcum pens a craft essay. Artwork by Nikki Frumkin.
Awards for Nature, Environmental, Science, and Mountain Writing Books, Stories, and Articles
Continuing Education
Residencies
Grants & Fellowships
In Praise of Specificity in Climbing Writing
By: Katie Ives | This essay previously appeared in the June 2026 Newsletter Over a decade ago, a ski magazine editor told me that he envied climbing writers because the experience of ascent seemed to lend itself readily to precise, vivid descriptions. As we make our way up a cliff, we
And We Became Our Landscape
In this second Desire Lines newsletter, we're pleased to share poetry from Madaleine Sorkin and Amrita Dhar, prose from Shirin Shabestari, artwork from Isabella Bates and Rebecca Sherer, a craft essay from Katie Ives, and a tribute to Junko Tabei from Julie Rak.