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Silvia Vásquez-Lavado in conversation with Enrique Planas

At the top of life

Arequipa 2023, Sunday 12 November 2023

Our guest at this event is a pioneer of great achievements. She is the first Peruvian to reach the summit of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest), and to reach the six peaks that follow in order of altitude. She is also the first openly LGTBI+ person to climb these seven mountains. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado tells her story in the book In the Shadow of the Mountain, winner of the Stanford Travel Book of the Year in the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. In the book, as well as her achievements, the author talks about a past of traumas and excesses, of alcoholism and promiscuous sex and, before this, of childhood abuse. Vásquez-Lavado reveals how an ayahuasca ceremony helped her to connect with the mountains. Linked with this past, she undertook her expeditions accompanied by other victims of sexual abuse, as part of her Courageous Girls project, founded in 2014. Silvia Vásquez-Lavado will talk to Enrique Planas about her activism, her memories and about the film currently being made, with Selena Gómez playing the lead role.