Boardman and Tasker died on Everest. Their families set up the award in their memory. Photo: Sotti CC-BY-SA-3.0
The shortlist for one of mountain literature’s top awards has been announced.
The Boardman Tasker prize, named after Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker who died on Everest in 1982, is awarded annually and carries a £3,000 reward for the winning entry.
Steve House’s Beyond the Mountain won last year. Fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry books are eligible for submission, with the theme of mountain, though not necessarily mountaineering.
The five shortlisted books for the 2010 prize are:
- No Way Down by Graham Bowley
- Ron Fawcett, Rock Athlete by Ron Fawcett with Ed Douglas
- The Hut Builder by Laurence Fearnley
- Climbing Philosophy for Everyone edited by Stephen E Schmid and
- Unjustifiable Risk? by Simon Thompson.
Judges for the Boardman Tasker award this year are Ian Smith, a past president of the Climbers’ Club, who chairs the group; Kym Martindale, lecturer in English and Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, and Barry Imeson, publisher of Loose Scree magazine.
Previous winners include Andy Cave, Jim Perrin, Andy Kirkpatrick and Robert Macfarlane.
This year’s winner will be announced at the Kendal Mountain Festival in November.
