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The Right Mountain: Practical Wisdom For Achieving True Wealth
Most people spend their lives climbing. More money. More status. More success. More. And then one day they reach the top and realize they feel the same—or worse.
In The Right Mountain, Matt Ludmer, written with Kristin Kaye, explores what happens when outward success no longer matches inner fulfillment. At the peak of a high-powered Wall Street career, Ludmer found himself facing a simple but unsettling question: if this is success, why does it feel so empty?
That question became a 25-year experiment in redefining wealth entirely.
Part memoir, part framework, part practical guide, Ludmer and Kaye offer a new definition of wealth for a world that has outgrown the old—one that integrates money, meaning, relationships, purpose, and inner development into a single system.
Because the question is no longer how much you can accumulate. It’s what kind of life you’re actually building. (Partners Media, Fall 2026)
When seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds witnesses a violent clash between a protesting tree sitter and a local logger, she is forced to flee the California town she grew up in. Jade runs as far as she can from the battles that plague her home and from the mysteries of the redwood forest, but the ancient redwoods are embedded in her psyche—she feels their call even in the dark and forgotten back alleys of Portland, Oregon where she’s hiding out. She soon becomes entangled with a lovable misfit and a band of radical slackers, environmentalists, and anarchists, and finds herself living 100 feet high in the canopy of a redwood grove, trying to decide whose side she’s on: the logging community she’s known her entire life or the environmentalists who are risking their lives for the future of the forest. When choosing sides only makes matters worse, Jade turns to the ancient trees themselves—and the thread-thin web that connects us all. (Spark Press, 2018)
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WINNER 2018 - International Book Awards in Fiction
FINALIST 2019 - NextGen Indie Book Awards: Regional Fiction
Every Day is Earth Day: 365 Books to Create Your Climate Change Library — LitHub
One of 5 Books to Read to Prep for Earth Day – BuzzFeed
One of 10 Books to Keep You Woke in 2018 – Bookstr
“In brilliantly onomatopoeic prose, Kaye shows how Jade comes to several epiphanies about her tree dreams while also coming to know the people that her family considers enemies. Throughout, the author relates the protagonist’s tale of redemption in delightfully sparse language, like a long poem in which small details matter, every word counts, and images are so cogent that they anchor readers in the fictive reality like tree roots . . . A superbly written tale filled with realistic, engaging, and quirky characters.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Kristin Kaye’s coming of age novel artfully places her young heroine in the midst of the burning questions facing the entire world, such as climate change and culture wars. At the same time, she manages to weave her into a discovery of the ancient human connections to both trees and dreams. This is a work of wit and imagination that informs as it inspires; it also marks a trail of encouragement for the mutual lives of people and trees.” — Michael Meade, author of The Genius Myth and Why the World Doesn’t End
Tree Dreams is a touching coming-of-age novel about a budding environmentalist, the seventeen-year-old Jade Reynolds. After witnessing a violent incident involving a logger and a tree hugger, the protagonist joins a band of radical environmentalists who live in the forests of Oregon. This is a great read for adults and teenagers alike. — Amy Brady for LitHub‘s list Every Day is Earth Day
Kaye’s first novel captures the way a teenager sees the world while also giving Jade a unique voice….Jade’s tree dreams weave her reverence for nature with the fraught and tenuous webs that connect all of us to it. Through her, readers feel the sway of the big trees, how they move “with so many other things, like another language.” — Booklist
“As much as Tree Dreams pulses with the ancient call to find our way home, Kristin Kaye’s story of loss and redemption is also fresh, edgy and thrilling. Her prose inhales and exhales and speaks to the best in us, reminding us that sometimes we must face an ache rooted deeply inside. We must risk everything, including our identity and comforts, to find the truth we are searching for.” — Maura Conlon-McIvor, author of FBI Girl: How I Learned to Crack My Father’s Code
“The big question was: how do I write an internal conversation with a tree that sounds like a two-way conversation? How do you give language to a mostly mystical experience?” - GrottoPod Episode 86: Kristin Kaye On Writing Mystical Experiences
Tree Dreams: A Novel
At age twenty-three and fresh out of drama school, Kristin Kaye landed her dream job: to write and direct a Broadway show in New York City. Its title? The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World, starring twenty-five of the world’s most muscular women. Her mandate? To turn The Celebration into a High Art Happening exalting women’s physical and intellectual strength.
Kaye thought this was her chance to enter a whole new feminist arena, but in reality she was about to enter another world entirely: her carefully orchestrated artistic interludes would be sandwiched between skits involving white lace thongs, smoke machines, and a bodybuilder spinning by her neck. Kaye tells the whole story in this hilarious book, alternating between an account of directing the show, which builds to the disastrous climax of opening night, and reportage on women’s bodybuilding and the little-known sub-culture around it, including the use of steroids, the side business of strong women who wrestle men for money, and the judging controversy that threatens to split the sport in two. (Avalon/ Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005. eBook released 2015)
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FINALIST - 2006 Oregon Book Awards
One of five new titles for women who resist easy definition. - Utne Reader
The history of women’s weight training rounds out this sassy, poignant memoir . - Utne Reader
Not long out of college and trying to figure out what to do with her life, Kristin Kaye found herself writing and directing a Broadway show about female bodybuilders. In telling the tale of this show and the women who were in its cast, she persuades us of their humanity while at the same time showing the less appealing aspects of women’s bodybuilding. Kaye tells her own story honestly and amusingly, but always keeps the bodybuilders at the center of the stage. - Oregon Book Awards Judge Jonathan Yardley
HUNKETTES: No discussions of female victimhood the other night at Roseland. Just two dozen women bodybuilders, very pumped up. - Arnold Roth, ‘The Talk of the Town’ column for The New Yorker
Kaye weaves the story…in an earnest, idealistic and endearing way….- Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
First-rate author Kristin Kaye deserves admiration for her immense, unflinching bravery in writing Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World. With deft writing skill and gripping momentum, she bared her evolving personal and professional raw self, exposing every hope, every delusion, misjudgment, rationalization and grief in the rarified experience of her first big break – writing and directing a Broadway show. The pain of her tough and bizarre journey is exquisite, and yet she unfolds the tale in such an engaging way that she allows you to laugh at it all, even eggs you on with her wounds gaping open…On top of this steady, jading, black humorist perspective is an equally naked stare into the wild world of professional female bodybuilding… - ‘Iron Maidens Makes Weight,’ by Kat Ricker
Kaye weaves together the story of her bittersweet directorial debut/meltdown with a darkly humorous look into the world of female bodybuilding [and has] also ended up creating the most up-to-date journalistic history of the sport available.- The Willamette Week
Kristin Kaye was a wide-eyed 23 year-old fresh out of drama school in 1993 when she responded to a classified ad that read: “administrative assistant wanted for exciting women’s project.” What she didn’t know at the time was that the project was a Broadway show entitled “The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World,” the brainchild of bodybuilder and writer Laurie Fierstein. Kaye ended up getting hired as the show’s director and had just six weeks to put it together. Iron Maidens is her funny, readable account of what followed: a regular girl’s journey into the world of women’s bodybuilding…Kaye has moved beyond her initial shock and bafflement at female bodybuilders, through fascination, to genuine admiration for them. Hopefully, a lot of readers will do too…- GeneX Magazine
Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World
Tree Dreams in the World
PURCHASE A TREE DREAMS KIT
Tree Dreams: A Novel inspired a global tree tagging campaign. Tree Dreamers from around the world have been tagging trees with their dreams of interconnection and sharing photos of their tags on social media and on treedreams.net.
I collaborated with Portland-based design collective Cumbersome Multiples to create tree tagging kits, which include tags, twine and Tree Dreams: A Field Guide to the Nature of Interconnection. The Field Guide is a small book of facts about trees and forests, quotes about stewardship and ideas about the myriad ways we are connected to the natural world, to each other and to our future.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” ~Yoko Ono
Tree Dreams Tree Tagging Campaign
DOWNLOAD FREE LESSON PLANS & NOVEL DISCUSSION GUIDE
Tree Dreams has been adapted for science, english, environmental ed and interdisciplinary classes. A generous grant from the Panta Rhea Foundation enabled the creation of standards-aligned lesson plans for K-8 and novel discussion guides for high school and college students and book groups.
Tree Dreams: A Novel and tree tagging lesson plans are recommended environmental education resources by Project Learning Tree. And Tree Dreams has even gone on tour with the circus—the Tree Circus that is.
I have hosted Tree Dreams events and taught workshops across the U.S. including at the American Library Association, National Science Teachers Association, North American Association of Environmental Educators, California Academy of Sciences, California Association of Environmental & Outdoor Educators, Delaware Green Schools Alliance and at the Young Artists Institute at Southern Oregon University.
It has also been a great joy working as a mentor with ISNAD-Africa in their Environmental Education Programme and sharing Tree Dreams and the tree tagging campaign with their Eco Heroes in Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, Kenya and other African countries.
Tree Dreams in Schools
Client Projects
Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy by Karen Solt
Karen Solt, an eighteen-year-old nonconformist with an alcohol problem, is working at a gas station when a slick Navy recruiter railroads her into enlisting in the military. Before she knows it, she is on a ship in the Deep South, struggling to navigate not only a world much different from her small Northern Arizona hometown but also her new discovery: she’s gay.
Figuring out her sexuality clarifies many things, but also creates a daunting new set of problems, for Karen. It’s 1984: being gay in the Navy is considered a crime. Karen learns to hide her secret and find a way to serve—and even thrive professionally—without getting caught. But concealing her truth leads to devastating consequences.
A story of desire, addiction, the damage of secrets, the power of community, and the soul-crushing cost of turning people into “others,” Hiding for my Life is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit—and a poignant call for each of us to come out from hiding and live our truth.
PURCHASE BOOK
American Buddha: How a Christian Minister Discovered Her Spiritual Destiny by Mary Ann McGuire
American Buddha is Mary Ann McGuire’s lively and insightful memoir of her physical, psychological, and spiritual voyage towards enlightenment. Set in Northern California and the spiritual sanctuaries of the majestic Himalayas, her book resounds with wisdom’s voice of truth. Buddhism teaches that the innate nature and pure qualities of all are serene and soothing. Welcoming the ups and downs of life’s journey, which soar with the birds and swim with the fish, Mary Ann’s story flows compassionately with all that came and went throughout the decades. The beautiful prose of American Buddha, illustrating a global spiritual journey in search of Truth (i.e. Dharma), is an inspiring bridge between east and west. —Tulku Thondup, noted scholar of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, author of The Heart of Unconditional Love
PURCHASE BOOK
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My memoir was over 200 pages when I asked for Kristin’s critique. I was pleased with what I had written, but felt challenged by how to weave the story, time and events together. Kristin has an incredible sense of narrative structure and was able to help me identify and develop a story arc that brought my experiences to life in a meaningful and compelling way. She helped me finesse unclear passages and directed me to areas that needed additional research. I was amazed at how quickly Kristin was able to grasp and articulate both Eastern and Western spiritual concepts (the book was a spiritual autobiography). She is deeply magnetized by the mystical side of life, which perhaps is one reason our professional relationship became a close personal friendship. Kristin is a gifted editor and book coach. I cannot recommend her highly enough! ~ Mary Ann, American Buddha: How a Christian Minister Discovered her Spiritual Destiny.
The Possibility of Today with Sibyl Chavis
VISIT WEBSITE
I worked with Sibyl on brand messaging and a related book. Sibyl writes, “The process of writing with Kristin helped me to organize my ideas, which accelerated my inner transformation and deepened my understanding of my true offering. Our work together gave solid form to my insights, which I now share widely via The Possibility of Today, in my own work, and with clients that I coach.
Work with Kristin! She will help you to finish your book. But maybe even more important—she will help you to find your purpose, understand why you're here and empower you to live your truth. ~ Sibyl Chavis, CEO, Sounds True Media
Authenticity is Now: A Working Definition of the Fluid State of Being as it Applies to Business and Design by Ziba Design
Ziba Design reveals the nature of authenticity in business in its new book Authenticity is Now: A working definition of the fluid state of being as it applies to business and design. Essays and a poignant pictorial narrative unearth the issues every company must consider when evaluating their commitment to being authentic: Why authenticity, why now?; What are four components of authenticity? Is authenticity in the eye of the beholder? Does authenticity get lost in translation? Authenticity is Now is an essential handbook for any company intending to be relevant in the global marketplace today.
“I love every prescription in it, and encourage every reader to apply them. Even better: the book exemplifies these principles itself.” ~ B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want
