Meet Corinne
Corinne Richardson
Corinne is a writer living in Bozeman, Montana where she teaches writing and ESL at Montana State University. She has taught in Italy, China, and most recently, Nepal.
She earned a B.S. in Paralegal Studies from New Hampshire College, and a Master’s Degree in English and Non-Fiction Writing from the University of Iowa, and ESL Teacher Certification in Florece, Italy. She has published several articles in regional Western magazines.
Corinne grew up on an Island in central Maine in a fifth-generation commercial fishing family where their lives were governed by the mysterious workings of the tides, and the fierce forces of nature and sea. After graduate school, on a trip to Big Sky Country, she fell in love with the Rocky Mountains and planted roots in this beautiful, tough country. In the summer, she returns to sea with her partner and explores the waters of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska.
Her writing is fueled by her love of the natural world, her sense of adventure, and passionate curiosity about people and cultures.
Pem Dorjee Sherpa
Beyond Everest
At first, Pem Dorjee Sherpa found it easy to walk past the dead bodies frozen on Mt Everest without much feeling.
The bodies had been encased in ice for many years and had no personal connection to him. But Pem’s emotions changed the day he was called to an Everest rescue operation to assist a fallen climber. By the time he had climbed up to the scene with other Sherpas, the ‘assist’ had turned into a body retrieval. Death was up close and personal. To get to “the roof of the world,” no one was immune to death. He came to understand that at Everest, losing a friend or climbing partner could break him. Still, he climbed. He climbed because he had to escape.
Pem Dorjee Sherpa’s story begins in Chyangba, Nepal, a remote village far from the mass tourism surrounding Mt Everest. Chyangba, like many Nepal villages, is a small, insular subsistence farming village where there are no roads or means of transporting goods other than by yak or human, and receives very few outside visitors.
Beyond Everest: One Sherpa’s Summit and Hope for Nepal tells the unique and improbable story of a local Sherpa who escapes from the depths and struggles of poverty by summiting Everest. The records that he and his three-person Sherpa-Newari climbing team set at the world’s most spectacular and challenging peak (one involving a forbidden love story) paves the way for him to leave Nepal and establish a life of security and upward mobility that he’s never known before. It is a passionate, authentic story of a young Sherpa who defies near impossible odds of leaving behind a legacy of familial, generational, and cultural abuse, poverty, alcoholism, and child labor – bursting with stories of courage, resilience, and the tenacity required to hold onto a dream.
