The Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this fall, has announced the finalists in the 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition.

Eight category awards are presented, plus a grand prize, honouring the best of international mountain literature: mountain literature (non-fiction), mountain fiction and poetry, environmental literature, adventure travel, mountain image, guidebooks, mountain article, and climbing literature.

Three Canadian authors are shortlisted in two categories:

Mountain Fiction and Poetry

• Mike Brown, 5.7 | Haikus for the Climber (Boreal Forest Books)

Environmental Literature

• Jean McNeil, Latitudes: Encounters with a Changing Planet (Barbican Press)
• Lorne Fitch, Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle (Rocky Mountain Books)

Diane K. Boyd’s A Woman Among Wolves, published by Greystone Books, is also shortlisted for the environmental literature award.

Winners in each category receive a prize of $3,000. Shortlisted titles related to climbing in the first seven categories are also eligible for the climbing literature prize. The grand prize winner receives an additional $5,000.

Category award winners will be announced on Oct. 16. The grand prize winner will be chosen from the category winners and ]announced during the festival on Nov. 6, 2025.

The festival also includes the Mountain Writers Intensive, a three-week residency for eight writers working on mountain narratives, environmental journalism, stories of adventure, or projects with an environmental theme.