The 2025 Mountain Writers Intensive reading, photo by Abigaile Edwards.
Celebrate the power of words shaped by mountains at the Mountain Writers Intensive Reading, a free public event in Banff Centre's intimate CLVB '33. This evening showcases new work from writers immersed in a three-week residency dedicated to exploring mountain narratives, adventure, wilderness, and the human connection to landscape. The program offers writers time and mentorship to hone their craft in Banff’s inspiring setting, and this reading is a chance to experience their voices firsthand.
Presented on the heels of the Banff Centre Mountain Book and Film Festival, hear writing that explores mountains and the outdoors as sites of adventure, risk, beauty, endurance, environmental change, cultural memory, and personal transformation.
Hosted by award-winning faculty Helen Mort (A Line Above the Sky, The Illustrated Woman), Nandini Purandare (editor of The Himalayan Journal), and Kate Harris (Lands of Lost Borders), the event brings together poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism , and hybrid forms that reflect the spirit of mountain literature.
Doors open at 6:15 p.m. in CLVB ’33, with readings beginning at 7 p.m. including an intermission. Following the readings, audiences are invited to stay and mingle with the writers until 9:30 p.m.
Related People
Kate Harris
Kate Harris is the author of Lands of Lost Borders, a national bestseller about cycling the Silk Road that won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, the Edna Staebler Award, the Boardman Tasker Prize, and the Banff Mountain Book Award for Adventure Travel. Her travel writing has also featured in Granta, The Walrus, Outside, and The Georgia Review, with notable mentions in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. A former Rhodes scholar with a background in science, she lives off-grid in a log cabin in northernmost British Columbia.
Helen Mort
Helen Mort writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Her collections Division Street, No Map Could Show Them and The Illustrated Woman are published by Chatto & Windus. Her memoir A Line Above The Sky won the Banff Mountain Book Competition Grand Prize and jointly won the Boardman-Tasker Award. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Nandini Purandare
Nandini Purandare is the Honorary Editor of The Himalayan Journal and President of The Himalayan Club in India. She treks in the Himalaya and writes for the Avehi-Abacus Project, a collection of children's curricula. Nandini Purandare along with Deepa Balsavar founded The Sherpa Project to collect oral histories of the Sherpas of Darjeeling. Their research and interviews resulted in the award winning book Headstrap: Legends and Lore from the Climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling which won the prestigious Boardman Tasker Award in the UK and the Climbing Literature Award in Banff.