Press Kit
Biography
Andrea Lani is the author of Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail (Bison Books 2022). Her writing has recently appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Northern Woodlands, and Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology, among other publications, and she's a regular contributor to Green & Healthy Maine Magazine. She's been honored with two Hewnoaks Artist Residencies, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist in the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2024 CrimeFlash fiction contest. Andrea has degrees in human ecology and creative writing from College of The Atlantic and the Stonecoast MFA Program and was an editor at Literary Mama for nine years. Aa an Author Accelerator certified book coach, Andrea guides emerging writers in developing and revising novels and memoirs, and as a Maine Master Naturalist, she teaches nature writing and nature journaling workshops around the state. She lives in central Maine.
Website: www.andrealani.com
Facebook: Andrea Lani Author
Instagram: @andrea.lani
Website: www.andrealani.com
Facebook: Andrea Lani Author
Instagram: @andrea.lani
Images
Photo by Chip Dillon
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About the Book
One grouchy husband. Three reluctant kids. Five hundred miles of wilderness. And one woman, determined to escape the humdrum existence of modern parenting and a toxic work environment and to confront the history of environmental damage wreaked by westward expansion and the Anthropocene.
In Uphill Both Ways Andrea Lani walks us through the Southern Rockies, describing how the region has changed since the discovery of gold in 1859. At the same time, she delves into the history of her family, who immigrated to Leadville to work in the mines, and her own story of hiking the trail in her early twenties before returning two decades later, a depressed middle-aged mom in East Coast exile seeking happiness in a childhood landscape.
On the 489-mile trek from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail, Lani’s family traveled through stunning scenery and encountered wildflowers, wildlife, and too many other hikers. They ate cold oatmeal in a cold, wet tent and experienced scorching heat, torrential thunderstorms, and the first nip of winter. Her kids grew in unimaginable ways, and they became known as “the family of five,” an oddity along a trail populated primarily by solo men. As she inched along the trail, Lani began to exercise disused smile muscles, despite the challenges of hiking in a middle-aged body, maintaining her children’s safety and happiness, and contending with marital discord. She learned that being a slow hiker does not make one a bad hiker and began to uncover the secret to happiness.
In Uphill Both Ways Andrea Lani walks us through the Southern Rockies, describing how the region has changed since the discovery of gold in 1859. At the same time, she delves into the history of her family, who immigrated to Leadville to work in the mines, and her own story of hiking the trail in her early twenties before returning two decades later, a depressed middle-aged mom in East Coast exile seeking happiness in a childhood landscape.
On the 489-mile trek from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail, Lani’s family traveled through stunning scenery and encountered wildflowers, wildlife, and too many other hikers. They ate cold oatmeal in a cold, wet tent and experienced scorching heat, torrential thunderstorms, and the first nip of winter. Her kids grew in unimaginable ways, and they became known as “the family of five,” an oddity along a trail populated primarily by solo men. As she inched along the trail, Lani began to exercise disused smile muscles, despite the challenges of hiking in a middle-aged body, maintaining her children’s safety and happiness, and contending with marital discord. She learned that being a slow hiker does not make one a bad hiker and began to uncover the secret to happiness.
Praise for Uphill Both Ways
This lovely book manages to be a geological drama, an environmental history, a trail memoir, and a case for the protection of wild places—all while musing brilliantly on what it means to be a wife, a mother, and a person in the world. If you put Terry Tempest Williams and Cheryl Strayed and Kelly Corrigan in a room together, this is the book they would write. I loved it.
~ Catherine Newman, author of Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness
Andrea Lani is an able and insightful guide as she takes readers on a fateful family hiking trip along the legendary Colorado Trail. In language both witty and lush, she vividly portrays this remarkable terrain while also sharing a personal story of self-examination and persistence. UPHILL BOTH WAYS gripped me from its hopeful start to its jubilant finish.
~ Aaron Hamburger, author of Nirvana is Here
Andrea Lani has crafted a true story on many levels, and her apt depictions of the journey bring the reader along with her, exposing personal peaks and valleys along with actual ups and downs. The geology of the Rockies she and her family trek across is an engaging saga told with close-up precision and sweeping landscapes, and her candid vignettes of family dynamics add humor and realism. Uphill Both Ways weaves a complex fabric of time and place--an adventure for anyone who treks through its pages.
~ Cloe Chunn, author of 50 Hikes in the Maine Mountains
Andrea Lani seamlessly weaves history, geology, and ecology in Uphill Both Ways, a moving memoir about nature, family, and learning to live in the moment. I felt I was right there with Lani and her family as they faced the anticipated and unanticipated challenges of hiking the Colorado Trail (though I was grateful to hike 500 miles vicariously, avoiding the blisters and shin splints). I loved this book! Lani’s prose is lovely, even as she is examining the environmental cost of human error, misguided forest management, and turning a blind eye to climate change. In the end, Lani accomplishes what she set out to do and she and her family learn that “even sucky things can sometimes be awesome.”
~ Kate Hopper, author of Ready for Air and Use Your Words
It was with great anticipation and pleasure that I read Andrea Lani’s new book, Uphill Both Ways. I hoped to find common experiences from when I took my own family along the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide and also celebrate this feat with her, of grabbing your whole family and finding the courage to take them on a long distance hiking adventure. Not too many years ago, it was rarely done. An end-to end hike was an accomplishment reserved for solo or at least adult backpackers. But in my opinion, the trail is where the family belongs and, thanks to Lani’s book, more families will become inspired to go to our country’s rich plethora of long distance wilderness trails and enjoy their gifts together. Well done Andrea and the whole Lani family!
~ Cindy Ross, author of Scraping Heaven: A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide
~ Catherine Newman, author of Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness
Andrea Lani is an able and insightful guide as she takes readers on a fateful family hiking trip along the legendary Colorado Trail. In language both witty and lush, she vividly portrays this remarkable terrain while also sharing a personal story of self-examination and persistence. UPHILL BOTH WAYS gripped me from its hopeful start to its jubilant finish.
~ Aaron Hamburger, author of Nirvana is Here
Andrea Lani has crafted a true story on many levels, and her apt depictions of the journey bring the reader along with her, exposing personal peaks and valleys along with actual ups and downs. The geology of the Rockies she and her family trek across is an engaging saga told with close-up precision and sweeping landscapes, and her candid vignettes of family dynamics add humor and realism. Uphill Both Ways weaves a complex fabric of time and place--an adventure for anyone who treks through its pages.
~ Cloe Chunn, author of 50 Hikes in the Maine Mountains
Andrea Lani seamlessly weaves history, geology, and ecology in Uphill Both Ways, a moving memoir about nature, family, and learning to live in the moment. I felt I was right there with Lani and her family as they faced the anticipated and unanticipated challenges of hiking the Colorado Trail (though I was grateful to hike 500 miles vicariously, avoiding the blisters and shin splints). I loved this book! Lani’s prose is lovely, even as she is examining the environmental cost of human error, misguided forest management, and turning a blind eye to climate change. In the end, Lani accomplishes what she set out to do and she and her family learn that “even sucky things can sometimes be awesome.”
~ Kate Hopper, author of Ready for Air and Use Your Words
It was with great anticipation and pleasure that I read Andrea Lani’s new book, Uphill Both Ways. I hoped to find common experiences from when I took my own family along the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide and also celebrate this feat with her, of grabbing your whole family and finding the courage to take them on a long distance hiking adventure. Not too many years ago, it was rarely done. An end-to end hike was an accomplishment reserved for solo or at least adult backpackers. But in my opinion, the trail is where the family belongs and, thanks to Lani’s book, more families will become inspired to go to our country’s rich plethora of long distance wilderness trails and enjoy their gifts together. Well done Andrea and the whole Lani family!
~ Cindy Ross, author of Scraping Heaven: A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide