Maria Coffey is an internationally published author of eleven books, and an acclaimed public speaker who eloquently explores the subject of risk-taking in the mountains - both the shadows of its costs and the brilliance of its gains. Maria has had personal experience of the consequences of risk; in 1982, her partner Joe Tasker, one of Britain’s top climbers, disappeared on the NE Ridge of Everest.

“That tragedy” she says “blew my life apart, but ultimately jolted me alive.”

Maria’s first book, Fragile Edge: Loss on Everest, is an account of her relationship with Tasker, and her own journey to Everest in the wake of his death.  In 2002 Fragile Edge won the prestigious Italian award, Premio Letterario Nazionale Leggimontagna. Her most recent title, Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow: The Dark Side of Adventure received the 2003 Jon Whyte Mountain Literature Award and a National Outdoor Book Award. It is a wide-ranging, thoroughly researched examination of the impact of climbing on people’s lives. According to the LA Times, the book ‘begins where Jon Krakauer leaves off’, giving voice to the characters  rarely heard from in the mountaineering story – the partners, children and parents of climbers. National Geographic Adventure Magazine describes the stories Coffey recounts as ‘tragic, heroic, compelling, exalting.” And Gripped Magazine lauds the book as containing “the beautifully urgent message that everyone must live life to the fullest.”

In her presentation, Coffey takes the audience on a spellbinding journey, recounting dramatic stories of loss in the high mountains, revealing what happens to those left behind, and sharing what she has learned about the transformative powers of tragedy, and how these lessons can be applied to all walks of life.