Tsering Yangzom Lama, Maria Coffey, Lyn Baldwin, and David Chaundy-Smart are the Canadian winners of the 2023 Banff Mountain Book Competition.

The winners were announced on Oct. 19, and in turn are eligible for the Grand Prize, which will be announced on Nov. 2 during the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, which runs Oct. 28–Nov. 5.

Gripped magazine editorial director Chaundy-Smart’s Royal Robbins: The American Climber (Mountaineers Books) won the prize for climbing literature, for which relevant books nominated across all categories are eligible. The book had been nominated in the nonfiction category.

The two special jury mentions went to Canadian authors: John Vaillant for Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, nominated for the award for environmental literature; and Sid Marty for Oldman’s River (NeWest Press), a finalist for the fiction and poetry prize.

Submissions for the eight prizes that celebrate mountain literature in all its forms were made from eight countries. The full shortlists were announced in September.

The Canadian winners are:

Mountain Fiction & Poetry

• We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada)

Adventure Travel

• Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life by Maria Coffey (Rocky Mountain Books)

Environmental Literature

• Drawing Botany Home: A Rooted Life by Lyn Baldwin (Rocky Mountain Books)

Climbing Literature

• Royal Robbins: The American Climber by David Chaundy-Smart (Mountaineers Books)