The Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival announced its longlist of finalists for the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Competition, which celebrates literature related to mountains.

The annual international competition offers a total of over $20,000 for awards in eight categories: non-fiction mountain literature, mountain fiction and poetry, mountain environment and natural history, adventure travel, mountain image, guidebooks, mountaineering articles, and climbing literature.

The 25 finalists in the eight categories were chosen from 153 book submissions from authors in 11 countries.

Several B.C. writers were among the finalists.

UBC forest ecology professor Suzanne Simard was chosen for her book, Finding the Mother Tree (Allen Lane Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada), in the Mountain Environment and Natural History category.

In the Guidebooks category, Metro Vancouver–raised, Squamish-based Taryn Eyton was named for Backpacking in Southwestern British Columbia (Greystone Books).

Writer Jörgen Vikström made the list in the Mountaineering Article category for “Polish Syndrome” for Mountain Life Magazine (September 2020), which is based in Garibaldi Highlands, B.C.

Among the other finalists from Canada, Ontario-raised, U.K.–based Jessica J. Lee is one of the nominees in the Adventure Travel category for Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts in Search of My Family’s Past  (Hamish Hamilton Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada), which won the 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.   

Other finalists are from across Canada, as well as Australia, Germany, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S.  

Each of these awards offers a $2,000 prize while the grand prize, to be awarded on November 5, offers $4,000. An international jury of writers, editors, and adventurers will determine the winners.  

The 46th annual Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival will take place as a hybrid event from October 30 to November 7.

For the full list of finalists, visit the Banff Mountain Book Competition webpage.