The Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature continues to attract a substantial level of entries. This year there were 22 entries, from Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. The Award will be made at the Boardman Tasker Shortlisted Authors and Awards event at Kendal Mountain Festival Online, at 7 to 9pm (UK time) on Saturday 21st November 2020.
The judges for 2020 are Katie Ives (Chair), David Canning and Michael Kosterlitz. They have selected the following 5 books for this year’s shortlist:
Patrick Baker
The Unremembered Places: Exploring Scotland’s Wild Histories
Birlinn Ltd
A lyrical exploration of Scotland’s regions of “rumor and folklore,” of hidden places and often-forgotten tales, that makes a compelling argument for a greater examination of “wild histories” beyond the most well-trodden narratives of adventure.
Patrick Baker studied Business, Finance and Economics at the University of East Anglia and gained a postgraduate qualification in Publishing from the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. He worked in the publishing industry for many years and is currently a commercial writer and content producer. A keen outdoor enthusiast, he has walked and climbed throughout Scotland and Europe. His hillwalking guidebook Walking in the Ochils, Campsie Fells and Lomond Hills was published in 2006. Follow him on Twitter @WildHistorian1.
Emily Chappell
Where There’s a Will: Hope, Grief and Endurance in a Cycle Race Across a Continent
Profile Books
A book that transcends the genre of sports memoirs with prose that deftly captures the physical and psychological intensity of ultra-distance cycling, as well as the struggles of depression and grief, rejecting inspirational clichés in favour of a complex, honest and profoundly human vision.
Emily Chappell worked as a cycle courier in London for many years, telling her story in What Goes Around. Since then she has explored the world on her bike and committed to supporting others to do the same, as a founder of The Adventure Syndicate.
Peter Foster
The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc: The Life of T. Graham Brown, Physiologist and Mountaineer
Baton Wicks
An intricately researched biography of a Scottish mountaineer whose contributions to climbing history on Mont Blanc and other mountains have long deserved a close look—and whose life and personality may have contained enigmas as challenging as the routes that he climbed.
Peter Foster is a retired consultant physician. He has been a member of the Alpine Club since 1975 and still climbs in the Alps most summers but his long-held ambition to climb Mont Blanc by one of Graham Brown’s routes up the Brenva Face remains unfulfilled. His interest in mountaineering history goes back to schooldays when he first started book collecting. He has contributed articles to the Alpine Journal, and The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc is his first book. He is married to Kate, has three grown-up children and two grandchildren. He lives on the edge of the Peak District.
Peter Goulding
Slatehead: The Ascent of Britain’s Slate-Climbing Scene
New Welsh Rarebyte
An in-depth history of the climbs and characters of British slate quarries that is also a meditation on the nature of obsession, on the persistence of wildness in unexpected parts of a post-industrial world, and on the rock itself, at times sharp, lustrous and strangely beautiful.
Peter Goulding is a climber from the north of England. He has spent most of his working life in pubs, kitchens and on building sites. He currently works at Center Parcs as an instructor and is an alumnus of UEA.
Jessica J. Lee
Two Trees Make a Forest:
On Memory, Migration and Taiwan
Little, Brown Book Group. Virago Press
A poetic and deeply moving account of Taiwan’s mountains, waters and forests that interweaves the author’s experiences of hiking with recollections of political, cultural and family histories, creating portraits of landscapes haunted by memory and longing.
Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author, environmental historian, and winner of the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author Award. She received a doctorate in environmental history and aesthetics in 2016, and her first book, Turning, was published in 2017.
Jessica is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review.
She lives in Berlin.
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
07/09/2020