Banff Mountain Film And Book Festival

The 44th annual Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival takes place from October 26 – November 3, 2019 at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Over nine days, the Festival showcases tales of remote journeys, ground-breaking expeditions and remarkable achievements, told by adventurers, photographers, authors, and filmmakers from around the world.

The Banff Mountain Book Competition has shared the category award winners set to compete for the Book Competition’s Grand Prize at this year’s Festival. The eight category award winners are selected by an international jury from a longlist of 29 finalists chosen from a total of 132 book submissions.

Authors from across nine countries offered ‘the best writing in mountain literature, mountain fiction and poetry, mountain environment and natural history, adventure travel, mountain image, guidebooks, mountaineering articles, and climbing literature’.

The 2019 Book Competition jury members are Paul McSorley (Canada, climber and writer of Alpine Justice Blog), Helen Mort (UK, writer, editor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature), and Nandini Purandare (India, writer, editor of the Himalayan Journal and an avid trekker in the Himalayas).

Category Award Winners

Mountain Literature (non-fiction) – The Jon Whyte Award
$2000 – Sponsored by the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
Waymaking: An Anthology of Women’s Adventure Writing, Poetry and Art
Helen Mort, Claire Carter, Heather Dawe, and Camilla Barnard, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2018)

Mountain Fiction and Poetry
$2000 – Sponsored by the Town of Banff
The Equilibrium Line
David Wilson, The Poetry Business (UK, 2019)

Mountain Environment and Natural History
$2000 – Sponsored by Rocky Mountain Soap Company
Down from the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear
Bryce Andrews, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (USA, 2019)

Adventure Travel
$2000 – Sponsored by Fjällräven
The Sun is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds
Caroline Van Hemert, Little, Brown Spark (USA, 2019)

Mountain Image
$2000 – Sponsored by Lake O’Hara Lodge
The Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim
Pete McBride, Rizzoli International Publications (USA, 2018)

Guidebooks
$2000 – Sponsored by the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides
Aoraki – Tai Poutini: A Guide for Mountaineers
Robert Frost, New Zealand Alpine Club (NZ, 2018)

Mountaineering Article
$2000 – Sponsored by the University of Alberta and the Alpine Club of Canada
Thirteen Feet Under
Jayme Moye, Alpinist Magazine (USA, June 2019)

Climbing Literature
$2000 – Sponsored by Rocky Mountain Books
Inner Ranges: An Anthology of Mountain Thoughts and Mountain People
Geoff Powter, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2018)

Special Jury Mention
Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race
Lara Prior-Palmer, Catapult (USA, 2019)

Special Jury Mention
Caribou Rainforest: From Heartbreak to Hope
David Moskowitz, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2018)

Grand Prize – the Phyllis and Don Munday Award
$4000 – Sponsored by the Alpine Club of Canada
The shortlist of category award winners above are eligible for the Grand Prize which will be announced on 31 October at the Banff Festival where category awards will also be presented to winning authors.

Alongside, 100 films from 19 countries have been chosen as finalists in the Banff Mountain Film Competition, featuring adventure, environment, and adrenaline sports. A total of 442 films from 43 countries around the world were considered. An international jury will announce the Best of the Festival awards in 11 categories and a selection of the winning films will be screened.