Waymaking (Paperback)

Winner: Mountain Literature (Non Fiction) The Jon Whyte Award, Banff Mountain Book Competition 2019

Waymaking is an anthology of prose, poetry and artwork by women who are inspired by wild places, adventure and landscape.

Published in 1961, Gwen Moffat’s Space Below My Feet tells the story of a woman who shirked the conventions of society and chose to live a life in the mountains. Some years later in 1977, Nan Shepherd published The Living Mountain, her prose bringing each contour of the Cairngorm mountains to life. These pioneering women set a precedent for a way of writing about wilderness that isn’t about conquering landscapes, reaching higher, harder or faster, but instead about living and breathing alongside them, becoming part of a larger adventure.

The artists in this inspired collection continue Gwen and Nan’s legacies, redressing the balance of gender in outdoor adventure literature. Their creativity urges us to stop and engage our senses: the smell of rain-soaked heather, wind resonating through a col, the touch of cool rock against skin, and most importantly a taste of restoring mind, body and spirit to a former equanimity.

With contributions from adventurers including Alpinist magazine editor Katie Ives, multi-award-winning author Bernadette McDonald, adventurers Sarah Outen and Anna McNuff, renowned filmmaker Jen Randall and many more, Waymaking is an inspiring and pivotal work published in an era when wilderness conservation and gender equality are at the fore.

Helen Mort is a writer, trail runner and climber who lives in Sheffield. She teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and has published two poetry collections with Chatto & Windus. Her latest, No Map Could Show Them, explores the history of women's mountaineering. She has been shortlisted for the Costa prize and the T.S. Eliot prize, and in 2014 won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection prize. Her first novel is forthcoming from Chatto in 2019. She is also the author of Lake District Trail Running and has written for Alpinist and Climb. In 2017, she was a judge for the Man Booker International Prize, and chair of judges for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature. Claire Carter is a writer, filmmaker and creative consultant, based between Sheffield and North Wales where she climbs, runs, and swims. She is the Artistic Director of Kendal Mountain Festival and the Engagement Officer for the Outdoor Industry Association. She has juried for Telluride Mountain Festival, Krakow Mountain Festival and SheExtreme Festival among others, and continues to work on the BMC's Women in Adventure competition. Her first film, Operation Moffat, codirected with Jen Randall, followed the life of the first female British mountain guide and won twenty-one international festival awards. Claire sits on the Nature Connection Index Academic Group, and is investigating how the arts can contribute to our connection to nature and allied empathy through her creative and corporate work. Heather Dawe is a writer, painter, cyclist and runner and lives in Yorkshire with her partner and young family. A data scientist who has founded a leading healthcare analytics consultancy, her first book, Adventures in Mind, was published in 2013 and her second, A Bicycle Ride in Yorkshire, in 2014. Heather's paintings and prints have been exhibited publicly around the north of England. She finds inspiration in the time she spends running and cycling in the mountains and other wild places. As her daughters grow she increasingly shares adventures in the hills with them. Camilla Barnard is an editor for Vertebrate Publishing and loves to climb, walk and generally be immersed in the outdoors. She is a keen dotwork illustrator and also enjoys practising yoga, reading and experimenting with various art mediums. She has worked on many of Vertebrate's most successful titles including There is No Map in Hell by Steve Birkinshaw and The Magician's Glass by Ed Douglas.