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Media Release | September 18, 2025 | Banff, AB

The 50th anniversary Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival is thrilled to announce the 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition category finalists.

As a key program of Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, the Book Competition is an internationally recognized literary competition that celebrates mountain literature in all its forms. $29,000 in cash is awarded annually with eight awards: Mountain Literature (non-fiction), Mountain Fiction and Poetry, Environmental Literature, Adventure Travel, Mountain Image, Guidebooks, Mountain Article, Climbing Literature, plus the Grand Prize selected by an international jury of writers, adventurers, and editors.

The prescreening committee read 142 submissions from authors in 11 countries, which were narrowed down to a longlist of 29 category finalists.

The shortlist of category award winners eligible for the Grand Prize will be announced on October 16, 2025. The Grand Prize will be announced during the festival on Thursday November 6, 2025. The 2025 Book Competition jury members are David Chambre (France), Paul Scully (UK), and Kate Neville (Canada).

Category finalists are listed alphabetically by title in each award category.

Mountain Literature (non-fiction) – The Jon Whyte Award
$3000 – Sponsored by The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Across the Himalaya
Vineeta Muni, Neemtree Tech Labs Pvt Ltd (India, 2025)

Enough: Climbing Toward a True Self on Mount Everest
Melissa Arnot Reid, The Crown Publishing Group (USA, 2025)

Human Nature: A Walking History of the Himalayan Landscape
Thomas Bell, Penguin Random House India (India, 2024)

Moving the Needle
Dave MacLeod, Rare Breed Productions (UK, 2024)

Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali
Cassidy Randall, Abrams (USA, 2025)

Mountain Fiction & Poetry
$3000 – Sponsored by the Town of Banff

5.7 | Haikus for the Climber
Mike Brown, Boreal Forest Books (Canada, 2024)

An Abundance of Wild Roses
Feryal Ali-Gauhar, Canongate (UK, 2024)

The Empty Rope
Dunstan Power, Black Pear Press Limited (UK, 2024)

Environmental Literature
$3000 – Sponsored by Rab

A Woman Among Wolves
Diane K. Boyd, Greystone Books (Canada, 2024)

Is a River Alive?
Robert Macfarlane, W. W. Norton & Company (USA, 2025)

Latitudes: Encounters with a Changing Planet
Jean McNeil, Barbican Press (UK, 2025)

The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light
Craig Childs, Torrey House Press (USA, 2025)

Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist's Search for a Paddle
Lorne Fitch, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2024)

Adventure Travel
$3000 – Sponsored by Rocky Mountain Books

Eventually a Sequoia
Jeremy Collins, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2025)

Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis
Jon Waterman, Patagonia Books (USA, 2024)

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue
Buddy Levy, St. Martin's Press (USA, 2025)

River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing
Steve Duda, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2024)

Mountain Image
$3000 – Sponsored by Mountain Life

All Humans Outside: Stories of Belonging in Nature
Tommy Corey, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2025)

Eden: A Portrait of Mountain Biking in Aotearoa New Zealand
Nick Stevenson, Thames & Hudson Australia (Aotearoa New Zealand, 2025)

Patagonia National Park: Chile
Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, Michelle Bachelet & Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia Books (USA, 2024)

Guidebooks
$3000 – Sponsored by the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides

Boulder Canyon Rock Climbs
Topher Donahue, Wolverine Publishing (USA, 2024)

Northern Horizons
Will Herman, Scottish Mountaineering Press (UK, 2025)

Soča from Source to Sea - Paddling Guidebook
Rok Rozman, Leeway Collective (Slovenia, 2024)

Southern Faces: An Introduction to Rock Climbing in Ōtepoti Dunedin
Riley Smith, WildLab (New Zealand, 2025)

Mountain Article
$3000 – Sponsored by The Lodge at Bow Lake

Behind the Curtain
Corey Buhay, Summit Journal (USA, 2025)

Fleet-Winged Ghosts of Greenland
Carolien Van Hemert, Hakai Magazine/BioGraphic (USA, 2024)

In the Shadow of the Mountain
Natalie Berry, The Fence (UK, 2024)

Something Lost Behind the Ranges
Michael Wejchert, Summit Journal (USA, 2025)

Writing Like a Mountain: Climbing Literature in the Anthropocene
Katie Ives, The Himalayan Journal (India, 2024)

Climbing Literature
$3000 – Sponsored by NOLS
Books with a primary focus on climbing from the categories above are eligible for this award. The winner will be announced October 16, 2025.

Grand Prize
$5000 – Sponsored by The Alpine Club of Canada
The shortlist of category award winners eligible for the Grand Prize will be announced October 16, 2025. The Grand Prize will be announced during the Festival on Thursday November 6, 2025.

This year’s 50th anniversary Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival (November 1-9), held by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Alberta, will welcome adventurers, filmmakers, authors, and photographers from around the world for an exceptional lineup featuring over 80 epic films (including World and North American premieres), plus a special Fire and Ice Symposium (November 4-5), the bustling Festival Marketplace, free talks on the Rab Stage, happy hours with live music, downtown events, exhibitions, and much more!

Don't miss our popular daytime book events, featuring authors, photographers, and explorers from around the world, including Hamish Frost, Guy Robertson, Sonnie Trotter, Joanna Croston, Hazel Findlay, Lynn Hill, Lydia Bradey, Sarah Hueniken, Brette Harrington, Sharon Wood, Tom Bell, Jean McNeil, Jeremy Collins, Cassidy Randall, Greg Hill, and Craig Childs.

The Festival schedule is available to view online. Tickets and passes can be purchased at banffmountainfestival.ca or Banff Centre Box Office.

Film competition finalists will be announced October 2.

Online films will be available following the Festival from November 12-23, 2025 (available in CAN/USA only).

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A miner from Potosí, Bolivia, working inside the mine to extract coal

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2025 Banff Mountain Photo Essay Competition Grand Prize winner

Showcasing the best in mountain-themed photo essays – and to recognize outstanding stories told through a series of up to five still images – the 2025 Banff Mountain Photo Essay Competition Grand Prize winner is Javier Arcenillas (Spain) for his series of photos The Silent Death Mine.

The Grand Prize will be presented during the Festival on Saturday, November 8.

“These photographs were chosen for this stage because of their powerful reality. They ask us to pause, reflect, and recognize how our changing world is deeply connected to these unseen struggles.”
– Irene Yee, Juror

We would also like to recognize a Special Jury Mention: Niklas Virsen for the essay Arctic Fox.

The 2025 international jury includes Irene Yee (USA), Hamish Frost (UK), and Mason Mashon (Canada).

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Michael Hidetoshi Mori is an artist and opera director known for genre-defying work. His bold productions include RUR: A Torrent of Light (MCANA 2023 Best New Opera), Forbidden with Persian classical and hip hop artists, and Shanawdithit, a landmark Indigenous-led opera. He has collaborated with punk band Fucked Up and led tech-driven innovations like cue-able wearable-tech. A two-time recipient of Canada’s highest award for opera direction, he also co-founded the Women in Musical Leadership program. Michael is General Director of Tapestry Opera, a board director of Opera America and the past chair of the Association for Opera in Canada

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After her studies of literature and art history at the École Normale Supérieure in her hometown Paris, Mariame Clément lived in the U.S.A. and in Berlin, where she did her first internships at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

She made her directing debut in 2004 with Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi in Lausanne. She has worked in Athens (Le Comte Ory), Tel Aviv (Il Viaggio a Reims), Santiago de Chile (Lulu), Oviedo (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Sevilla (Agrippina), Nuremberg (Le Nozze di Figaro), Essen (Le Grand Macabre, Salome), Strasbourg (La Belle Hélène, Werther, Platée, Der Rosenkavalier, La Calisto), Antwerp/Ghent (Giasone, Agrippina, Armida), Graz (Faust, Die Zauberflöte), at the Theater an der Wien (Castor et Pollux, The Fairy Queen), in Glyndebourne (Don Pasquale, Poliuto, Il Turco in Italia, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro), at the Opéra national de Paris (Hänsel und Gretel, Cendrillon), at the Royal Opera House (L'Étoile), at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria), at the Semperoper Dresden (Die verkaufte Braut), at the Bregenz Festival (Don Quichotte), at the Santa Fe Opera (Carmen), at the Volksoper in Vienna (Die Lustige Witwe), and at the Staatsoper Berlin (Roméo et Juliette).

In 2014 she created Philippe Hurel's opera, Les Pigeons d'argile, at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. In 2016, she staged the French premiere of Wagner's second opera, Das Liebesverbot, at the Opéra national du Rhin. Her production of Barkouf in the same theatre in 2018 was the first performance since 1860 of this newly rediscovered major piece by Offenbach.

With Roberto Devereux in June 2024, she completed a Donizetti trilogy at the Grand Théâtre de Genève which began with Anna Bolena in 2021 and continued with Maria Stuarda in 2022.

She made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2024 with Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

Further projects will take her, among other places, to Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Paris, Chicago and Bregenz.

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Banff Centre 2026 Spring/Summer Hèctor Parra is a Catalan composer living in Paris since 2002. Member of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis in 2021-22, he has premiered a hundred works around the world, commissioned by institutions such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Louvre Museum, the Munich Biennale, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, The Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Elbphilharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie or the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From 2013 to 2023 he was composer-in-residence at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Barcelona Auditorium, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Staatstheater Stuttgart. He has premiered eight operas with great public and critical success and which have had librettos by the writers Marie NDiaye, Händl Klaus, Fiston Mwanza Mujilla or Pier Paolo Pasolini/Calixto Bieito. The staging has been carried out by Bieito himself, by Milo Rau or Mariame Clément among others. He has been awarded the Grand Prix de l’Academie Charles Cros 2024, the Opera XXI Award 2023, the National Culture Award of Catalonia 2017, the Ernst von Siemens Composition Prize 2011, the 2007 Donald Aird Memorial Award of San Francisco and the 2005 Tremplin Prize of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and IRCAM, among others. His works are published by Durand/Universal Music Publishing Classical and by Editorial Tritó. Official website: hectorparra.netrts Program Info Session

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Join Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity for an exciting update on our Leadership department.

In this hour-long webinar, get an inside look at the three key pillars of Banff Centre's approach to Leadership training: Convening and Summits, Indigenous Leadership, and Cultural Leadership. Also, hear from Banff Centre's Executive Director of Leadership, Mark Wold, on the evolution of Leadership training at Banff Centre, where the team is headed next, and how these three areas are deeply interconnected by design.

We will also have our Admissions team live to answer questions. Register now to hear if there's a Leadership program that's right for you.

Find out more at: www.banffcentre.ca/programs

This webinar will be recorded and emailed after for those unable to attend. Registration is required.

The Possibilities Retreat, Leadership Development 2025 at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Photo by Rita Taylor.

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Join the Webinar! Learn about our upcoming Leadership programs at Banff Centre from our team of Directors and Admissions.

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Banff Centre Artist/Practicum/Staff Only

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Wednesday, October 8, 2025 - 10:00

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Peter Rockford Espiritu is the Executive & Artistic Director of Tau Dance Theater, the only professional dance company based in Honolulu founded by a native Hawaiian. Espiritu choreographed the stage production of Disney’s ‘The Tale of MOANA’ which world premiered on the inaugural voyage of the newest ship of its fleet, the Disney TREASURE in 2024. Espiritu choreographed the luau at the Disney’s ‘Aulani Resort; is a seven-time Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts - Choreographic Award winner and served for 7 years as a commissioner representing dance for the Mayor’s Office of Culture and Arts in Honolulu. Espiritu was awarded a Jacob’s Pillow LAB residency for the creation of new work in February 2025; is a Western Arts Alliance – Performing Arts Discovery Fellow 2024; a WESTAF BIPOC Fellow 2024; Advancing Indigenous Performances - Native Launchpad Fellow 2023; a Dance USA Fellowship to Artists Fellow and in 2022 was awarded a prestigious Intercultural International Choreographer’s Creation Lab residency at Banff Center for the Creative Arts in Canada. The company presented 5 sold out performances at the Lincoln Center in New York City for the Festival of Firsts in 2022 and continues to be a driving force throughout the artistic realm of the greater Pacific. The company celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026.

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Chris Lorway is the President and CEO of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Chris brings senior leadership experience across a broad range of artistic disciplines in both Canadian and international contexts. Well-positioned to strengthen Banff Centre’s position as Canada’s creative leader in arts, leadership, and convening, Chris has a proved record as a global influencer in arts and culture.

Chris is a Canadian citizen, born and raised in Cape Breton, and comes to Banff Centre from his recent position as both Executive and Artistic Director at Stanford Live in California. His artistic and community programs draw on the breadth and depth of Stanford University to connect performances to the significant issues, ideas, and discoveries of our time in a season featuring over 200 performances and events across four primary venues.

Prior to his role at Stanford Live, Chris was Director of Programming and Marketing at The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, where his focus was on developing a cohesive brand identity for the institution and ensuring that programming in the halls reflected the diversity of the city of Toronto.

Prior to that position, he was the inaugural Artistic Director of the Luminato Festival, where he commissioned or co-commissioned nearly 50 new works from Canadian and International artists.

Before his return to Canada in 2007, he was a consultant in the United States with AMS Planning and Research and AEA Consulting. These two roles offered him detailed insight into the governance and operations of major cultural organizations, including Carnegie Hall, New York City Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the West Kowloon Cultural District and San Francisco Opera.

Prior to his consulting experience, he worked for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where for two seasons he was part of the Lincoln Center Festival team. It was there he was introduced to some of the world’s top artists and companies. He also had roles in marketing and development at Lincoln Center and worked on the first phase of the $1.5 billion campus redevelopment project.

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Ryan Van Der Hout. Photo by Kristina Ruddick.

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The annual award at Banff Centre recognizes a mid-career Canadian artist whose practice advances the field of contemporary photography. This prize includes a fully funded month-long, self-directed residency at Banff Centre’s Leighton Artist Studios, valued at over $7,000 CAD.

BANFF, AB, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 – Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is proud to announce Ryan Van Der Hout (he/they) as the 2026 recipient of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Photography, facilitated through the Leighton Artist Studios program. Established by the friends and family of the late Canadian photographer Barbara Spohr, the annual prize is intended to encourage the ongoing development of contemporary photography in Canada.

An interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada, working across photography, public art, and sculpture, Van Der Hout investigates transformation through fragmentation and reflection, using glass and mirrors as both material and metaphor for queer experience and becoming. Their innovative integration of photographic imagery into three-dimensional objects and installations challenges how we see ourselves and our environment, inviting audiences to witness how breaking and reassembly can reveal new possibilities.

Represented by United Contemporary and Oeno Gallery, Van Der Hout has exhibited internationally across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Their work has been widely featured in publications including Time Out NY, The Huffington Post, Vogue Italia, Fortune Magazine, Reader’s Digest, CBC, and NBC News. They have also created public art projects for NYC Parks, the City of Toronto, and Nuit Blanche.

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Edge State, 2024. UV print on glass, solder, copper, stainless steel, varnish. 62" x 32" x 2". Unique

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After losing access to analog colour darkrooms over a decade ago, receiving the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award feels like a true homecoming to the foundational materials that first shaped my understanding of photography. I'm incredibly excited to be creating work surrounded by Banff's deep geological time while returning to these essential processes—light, glass, and photographic paper.

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Ryan Van Der Hout

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Van Der Hout will be in residence from January 19 to February 13, 2026, with 24-hour access to the Crich Studio, a Leighton Artist Studio equipped with private analogue darkroom facilities. In addition to accessing digital photographic production resources and support from Banff Centre’s photography facilitator, the award provides meals, accommodation with an honorarium at CARFAC-based rates. The jury selected Van Der Hout for this opportunity in recognition of their “exceptional critical, creative, and technical rigor.”

During the residency, Banff Centre will present a free public artist talk with Van Der Hout on February 6, 2026, from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building at Banff Centre. In this talk, they will discuss their broader practice and current investigations into the intersection of geological and human time, integrating analog darkroom processes with stained glass techniques to create new works that collapse temporal scales into unified forms.

This event is presented in partnership with Exposure Photography Festival and made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada, Government of Alberta, and the friends and family of Barbara Spohr.

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Installation view of Mending Shards 2024. Photo courtesy of Ryan Van Der Hout.

Installation view of Mending Shards 2024 at United Contemporary. Photo courtesy of Ryan Van Der Hout.

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We’re honoured to welcome Ryan Van Der Hout as the 2026 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award recipient at Leighton Artist Studios. Their work transforms photography into a sculptural, reflective practice. With Banff’s darkroom facilities and surrounding landscape, this residency offers an ideal setting to deepen their exploration of material, identity, and time.

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Karen Howard, Senior Manager, Leighton Studios and Self-Directed Residencies at Banff Centre

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Formerly a biennial prize, the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award became an annual award in 2025. Applications are open to Canadian mid-career photo-based artists with a strong record of accomplishment, supporting those focused on creating new works, developing specific projects, or researching innovative ideas.

The most recent recipient of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award was Karen Zalamea (2025). Past recipients include Anna Binta Diallo and Logan MacDonald (2021), Lotus L. Kang (2018), Lorna Bauer (2018), Elise Rasmussen (2016), Colin Miner (2013),Celia Perrin Sidarous (2011), Maegan Hill-Carroll (2009), Ramona Ramlochland (2007), Justin Waddell (2005), Dianne Bos (2005) and David McMillan (2004), among others.

To find out when the 2027 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award will open for submissions, visit banffcentre.ca/leighton-artist-studios.

To learn more about funding opportunities for artists at Banff Centre, visit banffcentre.ca/funding-opportunities-artists.

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For photos, information or interview requests, please contact:

Carly Maga
Director, Communications
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
tel: +1.403.763.6210
cell: +1.403.431.3423
carly_maga@banffcentre.ca

About Ryan Van Der Hout
Ryan Van Der Hout (b. 1987, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice investigates transformation through fragmentation and reflection, using glass and mirrors as both material and metaphor for queer experience and becoming. They create works that challenge how we see ourselves and our environment, inviting viewers to witness how breaking can reveal new possibilities.

 Central to Van Der Hout's practice is the innovative use of photographic imagery as a foundational element in creating three-dimensional objects and installations. In their "Twice Broken Glass" series, they explore parallel acts of destruction—shattering one pane through violent impact while precisely cutting another to mirror the breaks, then repairing both identically using traditional stained glass techniques. This investigation continues in their photographic glass portraits, where intimate images printed on glass are deliberately shattered and reconstructed into fragmented new forms, suggesting that when we put ourselves back together after breaking, we become stranger but more authentic versions of ourselves.

Van Der Hout's public works function as large optical devices, reflecting and refracting surrounding space to create ongoing physical dynamics with viewers. Their monumental sculpture "To Reflect Everything" (Washington Square Park, 2025, Toronto Sculpture Garden, 2023) used hundreds of mirror panels to create an optical device that transforms public space, drawing on the disco ball's history as a symbol of queer sanctuary and the satellite's promise of alternative futures.

Van Der Hout holds an MFA from Parsons at The New School and a BFA in Photography from Metropolitan University. Their work has been featured in Time Out NY, NBC News, Vogue Italia, Fortune Magazine, and CBC. Recent solo exhibitions include "Mending Shards" (United Contemporary, 2024) and "To Reflect Everything" (Toronto Sculpture Garden, 2023). They have created public art for NYC Parks, the City of Toronto, and Nuit Blanche, and have been supported by the Ontario Arts Council and awarded the Emerging Artist Award by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award from the Banff Centre. ryanvanderhout.com

About Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Founded in 1933, Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution built upon an extraordinary legacy of excellence in artistic and leadership development. What started as a single course in drama has grown to become a global organization leading in arts, culture, and creative decision-making across dozens of disciplines, from the fine arts to Indigenous Wise Practices. From our home in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity aims to move everyone who attends our campus - artists, leaders, thinkers, and audiences - to unleash their creative potential and realize their unique contribution to build an innovative, inspiring future through education, performances, convenings, and public outreach. banffcentre.ca

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As Program Delivery Specialist, Tonya (she/her) supports the realization of Arts programming at Banff Centre through the design and creation of documents, resourcing materials, and logistic support of the Programming team and Faculty. Her role connects the dots, assisting participants, faculty, and Banff Centre staff to ensure everyone has the information and resources they need for their learning experiences.

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Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, filmmaker and journalist. Born and living on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario, he has done everything from performing Standup Comedy at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., to serving as Artistic Director of Canada's premiere Indigenous theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. The recipient of three Doctorates (Hon), he is the author of 36 books and several documentaries.

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