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, Desire Lines will offer digital and print platforms for underrepresented storytellers seeking to push the creative boundaries of the genre.
We publish stories and artwork, share resources, and host workshops.
We are a movement. A challenge to the colonial narratives that overshadow outdoor culture. A platform for gritty, alternative stories left out of glossy expedition recaps and heroic conquest tales. A call for greater empathy toward all members of mountain communities, both human and more-than-human. A crucible for literary innovation. An eruption of unfettered visions of what adventure can be.
When you become a paid subscriber to Desire Lines, you're sustaining free community access to our online stories, helping subsidize discounts and scholarships for those who can't otherwise afford our events and workshops, and ensuring that every Desire Lines contributor is paid for their work. You're also helping us to work toward completing our goal of an annual print journal, which we aim to keep ad-light while maintaining complete editorial independence.
Why Desire Lines?
Desire Lines are natural pathways that humans and other living beings create as they leave behind established routes to follow their longings, seeking the edges of a glacial lake, a skyline of sharp pinnacles, or the glow of hidden dreams. Such lines also exist in mountain literature, charting visions beyond the guidelines and assumptions of a dominant canon.
When women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming writers share their own mountain stories, they transform topographies of adventure long defined by men, and they illuminate new ranges of possibility for all people.
As fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin once declared:
“If you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes…. All the maps change. There are new mountains.”
Why Now?
The idea for Desire Lines began in February 2024, a time when three of us — Rosie Bates, Holly Chen, and Katie Ives — gathered to teach a workshop for women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming writers at the Women Up Climbing Festival in Los Angeles. We'd felt inspired by the rise of underrepresented storytellers who were launching a new age of rigorous honesty, artistic experimentation, and daring creativity. As experienced adventure writers, we longed to do more to support this movement, and we hoped to offer mentorship to writers who were joining it.
During the workshop, we were astounded by the power of the solidarity and support that formed among our students and by the boldly imaginative work they created together. We witnessed the unique strength and imagination that emerges from the margins of mountain literature: an ability to see beyond assumptions that can transform not only outdoor writing, but how humans envision themselves and their roles in the world.
Later, at the Banff Mountain Film & Book Festival in November 2025 a year after the election of Donald Trump, Katie heard an audience member at a book launch ask the pertinent question: "We are in a moment when women's rights are taking a step backwards. How do we step forward again?"
Since then, the Trump administration has continued to promote a backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion, while hindering efforts to protect public lands and to mitigate climate change in the United States. More than ever, we need to amplify the voices of those at risk of being silenced. And we need to listen to those who can speak of encounters with nature in alternative ways — not of conquest, dominion, and exploitation, but of empathy, communion, and responsibility.
At a time when spending time outdoors might feel like a frivolous escape from the day-to-day reality of global conflicts and environmental devastation, we aim to show how it can foster new perspectives about our relationships with the Earth and generate feelings of responsibility and empowerment for positive change. As Scottish mountain writer Nan Shepherd wrote about communing with her local mountains during the Second World War:
“It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it.”
Continuing this philosophy with writers Natalie Berry and Juliet Kennedy, we believe that great literature can respond to the current crises and that mountain stories can help navigate uncertainty and inspire resistance. Out of the stewardship and love that adventurers can learn to practice in the wild, visions of a better future can arise.
We intend to platform authentic and diverse mountain-themed stories and artwork from women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming outdoorspeople — and pay them fairly and promptly for their work. You won’t find AI-generated content in our pages, only pure, human creativity with all its spirit and soul. Our newsletters will feature short essays, book reviews, poems, artwork, recommended reads, and community resources.
To receive our newsletters via email, sign up for free as a supporting member, or become a sustaining member for $3, $5, or $25 per month. Future posts and online resources will only be visible to members.
In our next newsletter, which will be sent out June 23, we'll have an alpine love poem by Madaleine Sorkin, a memoir of an Iranian mountaineering childhood by Shirin Shabestari, a craft essay by Katie Ives, a tribute to Junko Tabei by Julie Rak, and a book review of Flow: Women's Counternarratives from Rivers, Rock, and Sky, plus more announcements of upcoming events and a round-up of links to stories and people who have inspired us lately.
Thank you for joining us on this journey to trace alternative paths and build a supportive community.
- Desire Lines Founding Editors Rosie Bates, Natalie Berry, Holly Yu Tung Chen, Katie Ives, and Juliet Kennedy
Who We Are
Community Paths
Events and opportunities
- Desire Lines event: Online Panel Discussion - Restoring Lost Histories: Nandini Purandare, Pasang Sherpa, and Bernadette McDonald discuss how examining oral histories, mountain artifacts, desire paths, and other creative forms of research can highlight marginalized perspectives. August 6, 5:30 – 7 pm PT. View our events page for more and details and upcoming Desire Lines events such as our Two-Hour MFA course and workshops.
Thank you for subscribing to and reading Desire Lines! Please visit our website, follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and get in touch on hello@desirelinescollective.org with suggestions or submissions for the newsletter (writing, photography, cartoons etc. — and if you like what we're doing, please share!).
Become a paid subscriber and help us provide free access to online content, ensure every Desire Lines contributor is paid for their work and support our goal of an annual print journal!
