2024 is the ten year anniversary of the publication of my memoir, Mountain to Mountain. Mountain to Mountain is a first-person journey through the roles that my activism, adventure, motherhood, and sexual assault played in shaping who I am as a woman in my thirties. Through cycling through the remote mountains of the Panjshir Valley, to learning to ride a motorcycle in the back roads of Kabul, to meeting with women in the Mazar-i-Sharif, Fayrab, and Kandahar prison, and working to create and projects that empower women in a country ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for a woman, I learn the value and cost of having a voice in the world.
“Shannon Galpin's lovely cycling saga is an inspiring and illuminating window into the lives of modern day Afghan women and their continuing struggle to ride their own path to freedom, recognition, and equality.” ―Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed
“Mountain to Mountain reads like one of Shannon Galpin's bike rides, fast-paced and unpredictable. It traces her intimate journey as a survivor and her travels across a rugged terrain, in the process bringing alive a vital and poignant message:Equality for Afghan women means more than just voting rights or access to parliament--it means having the same basic freedoms as men.” ―Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living
Streets of Afghanistan was published by Hatherleigh Press in 2013 and documents the 2012 art installation created by Shannon as a touring public street art exhibition in the public spaces of Afghanistan. Bringing together Afghan and international photographers and photojournalists in a collaborative exhibition, Shannon curated a life-sized, pop-up, street art installation that toured public spaces in Afghanistan in the fall of 2012. She documented the installation with long time friend and collaborator, Tony Di Zinno who also had images in the exhibition from their trip together in 2008. The book documents six of the public installations and the process of bringing the exhibition to Afghanistan and the public’s reaction to the surprise shows. Streets of Afghanistan illustrates the power of representation through art in a country where photography is a daily occurence for Afghans but rarely do they get a chance to interact with the images taken and the importance of normalizing the importance art in conflict zones. Art belongs everywhere.
The Rosette is a graphic novel co-written by Shannon Galpin and Devon Galpin Clarke and illustrated by Mariana Prieto. It tells the story of a teenager girl who is born with the power to shapeshift into animals and a mysterious rosette birthmark on the back of her neck. On her 4th birthday she gets a gift of a stuffed snow leopard, which she names Himalya, Himmy for short. Himmy turns out to be alive and becomes her mentor and sidekick and helps her control her powers. Eventually she understands the meaning behind her rosette birthmark and learns of a parallel animal world that is working to fight the sixth extinction, and they have been waiting for The Rosette’s arrival. Integrating the lessons learned from field research with Endangered Activism and a lifelong passion for endangered species and wildlife conservation, Devon has created a superhero story with heart and purpose. In the graphic novel, Himmy is invisible to everyone but The Rosette and other animals, but leaves silver footprints behind - this sparked Devon’s first streetart project in Paris in the fall of 2017 - silver snow leopard footprints walking through the streets of Paris with Himmy’s distinctive heart shaped pinky toe. Kickstarter for finishing funds fall 2018.