The Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature continues to attract a substantial degree of interest and level of entries. In this our Fortieth Anniversary Year, there were 21 entries, with authors from Great Britain, Bulgaria, the USA and Nepal.
The Award will be made at the Boardman Tasker Shortlisted Authors and Awards event at the
Kendal Mountain Festival on Friday 17th November 2023.
Tickets available here.
The judges for 2023 are Matt Fry (Chair), Joanna Croston and Paul Pritchard. They have selected the following five books for this year’s shortlist:
Pradeep Bashyal & Ankit Babu Adhikari
SHERPA
Stories Of Life And Death From The Forgotten Guardians Of Everest
Octopus Press
With a narrative that focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of climbing literature, Sherpa takes us on a beguiling journey into the culture, folklore and of survival of the native people that live in the high Himalayas. These are the people that have helped so many Western expeditions scale the highest peaks in the world, enabling the experiences that have shaped mountaineering history. This book tells the story of the Sherpas in their own words and, in a timely statement, also gives us a glimpse into the melting world that they live and work in – a world being rapidly and irreparably altered by changing climate.
Pradeep Bashyal is a BBC journalist based in Kathmandu. He has been covering mountains and mountaineering for nearly a decade. His works have also appeared in Nepal Magazine, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, Asian Geographic, National Geographic, The Diplomat, among others. After this book, in his to-dos are making a documentary on his toddler son and recording a song with Ankit. But no one has ever heard him sing. He tweets @pdpbasyal
Ankit Babu Adhikari is a writer and social science researcher based in Kathmandu. He has worked with national dailies, including The Kathmandu Post and The Himalayan Times. His works have also appeared in The Washington Post and Asian Geographic. If you google him, you may come across some strange feeds to songs and profiles featuring 'Ankit Babu Adhikari'. Don't get confused, it's the same person. He rarely tweets @AnkitAdhikari01
Katie Brown
UNRAVELED
A Climber’s Journey Through Darkness And Back
Mountaineers Books
A compelling, raw and honest memoir from one of the most successful climbers of her generation. Brown’s bold book gives us a no-holds barred insight into her early life, her struggles with mental health and eating disorders, all against the backdrop of her meteoric rise to climbing fame as a teenager in the mid-90s. The question of ‘what happened?’ is constant and fascinating theme throughout this unforgettable read and shows how climbing can provide escapism in its rawest form.
Recognized as one of the greatest female rock climbers in history, Katie Brown began climbing at age 12 and soon dominated national and international competitions. She mastered the discipline of climbing hard outdoor sport routes quickly, often on the first try. Retired from climbing, Brown is a writer and mom. Find her on Instagram @katiebrownclimbs.
Merryn Glover
THE HIDDEN FIRES
A Cairngorms Journey With Nan Shepherd
Polygon Books
Drawing on the work of Nan Shepherd and her classic, The Living Mountain, is not an undertaking to be taken lightly and Glover doesn’t disappoint in this beautifully written and well-researched journey through the Cairngorms. Intertwining her own personal experiences of the mountains with Shepherd’s own observations, this book is an ode to the unique landscape and a valuable addition to mountain literature.
Merryn Glover was born in a former Rana palace in Kathmandu and grew up in Nepal, India and Pakistan. Her first major work was a stage play, The Long Way Home, which was broadcast on Radio Scotland. She has written three further radio plays for Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. Merryn’s first novel, A House Called Askival (2014), was published by Freight. Her second, Of Stone and Sky (2021) was published by Polygon and is set in the Highlands where she now lives. In 2019, she was appointed the first Writer in Residence for the Cairngorms National Park.
Leo Houlding
CLOSER TO THE EDGE
Headline
Without doubt, Leo Houlding is one of the world’s foremost current climbers. There is barely a feat of adventure or endurance that he hasn’t tackled. Leo started climbing at ten years of age in the Lake District and was the youngest person (and first Briton) to free climb El Capitan. This dynamic, honest and, at times, harrowing book goes the extra mile – teaching us all about the pressures of balancing a life lived in pursuit of exhilaration but also one’s own adventure, whatever that may be.
Leo Houlding started climbing in the Lake District as a boy, rapidly rising to become the UK's most daring climber whilst still in his teens, before taking on jaw dropping ascents and epic expeditions to the most impressive and remote rock summits on the planet - from the Amazon to Antarctica, El Capitan to Everest. As well as being a world-class climber, alpinist and adventurer, he is also a filmmaker and popular public speaker.
Faye Rhiannon Latham
BRITISH MOUNTAINEERS
Little Peak Press
In this truly unique and thoroughly engaging short book, we are taken on a dream-like and wintry tour of F.S. Smythe’s original 1942 work, British Mountaineers. Latham uses the processes of erasure, curation and collage to create a reframed look at a classic text in an exciting, contemporary form. This is a thoughtful artwork as much as it is a meditation on climbing history.
Faye Latham is a writer, visual poet and rock climber based in Snowdonia and London. She completed an English degree at the University of Bristol in 2018 and a Masters in History of Art in 2019. In January 2020 she was awarded the Literature Wales Bursary for Writers Under 25 to support the development of her poetry, which resulted in her work being published in various literary journals and online magazines including UKClimbing, Lumin Journal, the CTC Rewilding Anthology and the Cambridge Literary Review. In 2021 she was awarded a grant with the Society of Authors and her pamphlet Ruin/Nation was highly commended in the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. British Mountaineers is her first poetry collection.
Once again the Award continues to attract a high level of interest and entries on a variety of aspects of the mountain environment.
Steve Dean
Secretary
Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust
The 2023 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature is supported by Mountain Equipment
Mountain Equipment is proud to be associated with the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, one of the most prestigious and respected international literary awards, and we’re delighted to be able to officially support it.