The 2017 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature opens today - 1st December!

Films are all very well, but, as far as I am concerned, the event at Kendal is the Boardman Tasker Award.  Having enjoyed the welcome boost of having my first book win the prize thirty years ago, I know just how valuable the BT brand is.

On November 18th The 2016 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature was awarded to Simon McCartney for his book The Bond. This is an epic account of two major climbs in Alaska in 1978 and 1980, and the impact they had on the lives of the two mountaineers involved.

Join us at Kendal Mountain Festival for a special event in memory of Jim Curran, one of the founders of Kendal Mountain Festival and “a genuine Renaissance man of climbing”.

Join us at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal on Friday 18 November as we announce the winner of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 2016.

This year we are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Pete and Joe’s ascent of Changabang, with a display at the Kendal Mountain Festival during the Literary events.

Interest in the Boardman Tasker (BT) Award for Mountain Literature remains as great as ever and
this year’s competition has resulted in 35 books being submitted, from personal journeys and
adventures, poetry, biographies & autobiographies to novels.

Event at Sheffield Hallam University.

This very enjoyable event was attended by, Martin Wragg, Dennis Gray, Janet & Steve Dean from the BT Trust. More than 200 people enjoyed a series of highly amusing and interesting speakers, describing various aspects of Ken's eventful life.

Featured in The Guardian, Helen Mort's poem: An Easy Day for a Lady

Helen Mort’s new poetry collection, No Map Could Show Them (Chatto), is a witty and innovative exploration of women and mountaineering that is seriously playful with history in the assured voice of a modern young woman who also has other lives and other interests (love poems, a missed train, heart surgery, running, the starling murmuration above Middleton Moor, the sauna worker who knows ‘I work in mental health’).

With great sadness we report the death of Ken Wilson. A great friend of The Boardman Tasker Mountain Literature Award from the outset. As publisher he had a number of books on the shortlist and was always present at the BT event. Ken was a huge character and will be sadly missed and fondly remembered by all of us. He was awarded the Boardman Tasker Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

Ken Wilson 1944-2016