Latest
Book Review: An Abundance of Wild Roses
The Mountains Are Coming Undone
Brynn Saito on the inner mountains we inhabit. Kate Wilkinson on climate change and hope. Holly Chen on a quote that inspires her. Hanniah Tariq on an alternative literary ethos for the Anthropocene. Endria Isa Richardson on a climbing language that transcends a colonial past.
“In Such a Divided Country, It’s Revolutionary”: Climbing as an Act of Reconstruction in Syria
After the fall of the Assad regime, Syrian climbers are bringing climbing back to life in a country undergoing reconstruction. A report by Bushra Alzoubi from Damascus, originally published in French by Vertige Media.
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
Writer Resources
Residencies
Writer Resources
Grants & Fellowships
Craft Essays
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
Newsletter
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.
Newsletter
Desire Lines - a new movement, home and community hub for mountain writing and art
Hello and welcome to the first Desire Lines newsletter! We're launching Desire Lines Collective, an online mountain writing community, a newsletter, and a print journal dedicated to elevating women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming writers of mountain literature. A counter to clickbait and the status quo in outdoor media,
Writer Resources
How to Pitch an Editor
Book Review
Book Review — Flow: Women's Counternarratives from Rivers, Rock, and Sky
By Katie Ives | A version of this review originally appeared in Alpinist 90. Beneath old formulaic tales of men's dominion over mountains, rivers, and air, there have always been more varied stories by people of all genders — at times flowing like underground streams or bursting forth with a
Craft Essays
Writing Like a Mountain: Climbing Literature in the Anthropocene
By Katie Ives | Originally published in The Himalayan Journal 79 and a finalist for the 2025 Banff Mountain Book Festival Mountaineering Article Award There's a canyon near my home that I like to visit on winter dusks, where the shadowed ice seems bluer and more luminous than anywhere
Craft Essays
The 30-Detail Challenge: How to Immerse Readers
By: Laurie Gwen Shapiro Strong feature writing thrives on specific, concrete details that immerse readers in a scene. This exercise will help you generate 30 vivid details for your story — forcing you to go beyond vague description and uncover the richness of your subject. By the end of this exercise,
Book Review
Book Review — Tap Dancing on Mt. Everest: A Young Doctor’s Unlikely Adventure
By: Katie Ives | Originally published in Alpinist 89. May 1988: For days, Mimi Zieman stared into a void of whirling snow. Somewhere behind the mists, her teammates Robert Anderson, Stephen Venables, and Ed Webster were staggering down Chomolungma (Everest), after the first ascent of the remote Neverest Buttress, far from
Craft Essays
Strange Places: Finding a Voice through Climbing and Writing
By: Katie Ives | This essay previously appeared in the February/March 2025 edition of Gripped. It feels strange to defend the human art of writing, yet with the rise of generative AI, I find myself having to do so — even at times among fellow climbers, though by nature, we love
Writer Resources