Flow

“While most adventure and outdoor sports narratives are hero stories featuring achievements, “conquests,” and world’s firsts, it is refreshing to flip the script and focus on the human stories. Flow’s writers share singular personal experiences that are not without vulnerability, doubt, and inner struggle. Hopefully, these stories are a small step toward more inclusivity in these sports.” —Nouria Newman, French whitewater kayaker

“Flow proves women belong in high mountains and extreme landscapes. They bring resilience, sharp judgment, calmness, and an unstoppable spirit to every climb, river, and peak.” — Honza “Tráva” Trávníček, Czech alpinist

“These are stories of courage and self-awareness that shine in defiance of the patriarchal forces trying to hold adventurous women back. They give even greater depth and meaning to skillful movement through rivers, rock, and sky.” —Sonja Swift, author of Echo Loba, Loba Echo

“Flow is a collage of the female spirit in high-risk sport that unites a universal sisterhood with the power of self in wondrous natural landscapes. It highlights global similarities of how women discover, explore, and expand their adventurous side to master their chosen pursuit. While each story is that of an individual author, the entire collection speaks a similar language of diversity and its related challenges. The introductions for each section – Rivers, Rock, and Sky – are excellent and provide thorough backgrounds to paddling, climbing, and highlining that invite the reader to understand the technical language and context of the personal accounts that follow.” —Helen Rolfe, co-author of Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei

“The storytellers in Flow are part of a larger movement sweeping the world, as women and nonbinary writers of all backgrounds create counternarratives of adventure, rendering more visible the varied landscapes of journeys undertaken beyond social barriers, and retracing the diverse and imaginative pathways drawn throughout wild places – while they navigate currents of swift rivers, climb walls of steep mountains, and traverse lines that stretch high and far across the wild air.” —Katie Ives, author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams