Since its inception in 1979 at the hands of passionate and renowned mountaineers Tony and Gillean Daffern, RMB (Rocky Mountain Books) has been publishing award-winning books focused on the dynamic and unique aspects of mountain culture, outdoor adventure and "writing of place," including volumes on hiking, climbing, skiing and outdoor recreation; history, art, memoir, biography and travel; and environmental writing. At RMB we "Think Outside."
RMB publications have won numerous awards over the years. Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering
(2000), by Chic Scott, won the 2001 Canadian Rockies Award at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and was also named Alberta Trade Book of the Year for 2001. Other RMB Canadian Rockies Award winners include
The Yam (2002), Caves of the Canadian Rockies (2003), Bruno Engler (2004),
The 11,000ers of the Canadian Rockies (2005), Powder Pioneers (2006) and
Glen Boles (2007).
In 2007, RMB was pleased to see nominations of Guardians of the Peaks, by Kathy Calvert and Dale Portman, for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction at the 2007 Writers Guild of Alberta Literary Awards, and of
The Diva and the Rancher, by David Finch and Jennifer Hamblyn, for the 2007 Grant MacEwan Writer's Prize. An earlier RMB title nominated for the Grant MacEwan Prize, and short-listed for the Eggleston Award, was the biography
R.M. Patterson (2000), also by David Finch.
In 2008, RMB had five titles nominated for various awards at the Banff Mountain Book & Film Festival:
Mount Assiniboine: Images in Art (Canadian Rockies Award Finalist),
Expedition to the Edge and Morning Light (Adventure Travel Finalists),
Bugaboo Dreams (Mountain Literature Finalist) and Baffin Island (Mountain Exposition Finalist). RMB is very proud to have increased our nominations from one each year to five in a single year, and obviously we hope this is a trend that will continue!
The constant goal of RMB is to expose readers to the forgotten, the established and the contemporary voices of various mountain, outdoor and environmental writers, artists and thinkers. We do this by bringing back into print vital works from the early 20th century, along with continuing to publish and reprint writing from the late 20th century, all the while working toward giving voice to new writers, artists and communities as they are evolving in the 21st century.
RMB is strongly immersed in Canada's publishing industry and we look forward to exploring the multi-layered aspects of outdoor culture in order to offer readers glimpses into the thoughts and lives of the people that comprise our world in the Mountain West and beyond.
Rocky Mountain Books acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), a part of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
