Blending Mountains + Medicine into a Memoir: Tap Dancing on Everest with Grit Lit Featured Author Mimi Zieman | See Her Outside Podcast
Mimi Zieman was a third-year medical student when she signed on as the sole medical officer and only woman on a four-climber expedition attempting the east face of Everest from Tibet (a route that had only been climbed once before).
She kept detailed journals the whole time, full of poems and descriptions she’d return to thirty years later when she finally sat down to write the memoir.
Mimi Zieman is a physician, writer, and the 2025 Georgia Author of the Year for her memoir Tap Dancing on Everest, also selected as the Best Memoir of 2024 by the American Writing Awards. She grew up in New York City, fell in love with the mountains during summers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in college, and trekked solo through the Annapurna and Everest regions of Nepal before starting medical school in 1985. She practiced as an OB/GYN for decades, has written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, and writes the newsletter, Medicine, Mountains & More, combining medical news with inspiration from art and nature.
Mimi and Angie talked about:
Training to be the sole medical officer on an Everest expedition while still a third-year med student
Solo backpacking in Nepal in a pre-internet era
Why Mimi became an OB/GYN after a bad teenage appointment
The beauty and challenge of being the sole woman on an Himalayan expedition
What menstruating adventurers should know before heading into the backcountry
Advice for women who want to write a book, and behind the scenes of writing a vulnerable memoir
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