Blood Sweat Tears

Edited by Christine E. Reed, this anthology gathers essays about pursuing adventure and endurance in a female body, without smoothing away the physical realities.

Blood Sweat Tears brings together writers whose experiences range across mountaineering, endurance sport, thru-hiking, military life and other demanding environments. Their essays examine what changes when menstruation, motherhood, grief and other embodied realities meet cultures that have often treated the male body as the default.

The collection is organized into three sections. BLOOD addresses menstruation and the practical and cultural realities surrounding it. SWEAT considers effort, resilience and endurance. TEARS turns toward the emotional costs and complications that can accompany ambitious outdoor lives.

The contributors write from different disciplines and circumstances, but the collection shares an interest in what has been left out of conventional adventure narratives. The result belongs firmly within contemporary women's outdoor writing: candid about bodies, alert to the pressures around them, and interested in the lives behind the achievement.