The Kendal Mountain Book Festival was launched in 2004 as a pilot, after several years of deliberation and research into similar events at Trento and Banff associated with the Film Festivals there. There was also some prompting from mountain writers in Britain , who saw a Book Festival as a natural extension to the Film Festival week and Cumbria as the natural home for such an event. It is the only Festival of its kind in the country and it complements the one-day Festival of Mountaineering Literature which takes place each March at Bretton Hall College , Wakefield . It consists of readings, debates, interviews and workshops and aims to provide high quality experiences for both readers and writers.

It provides a platform for mountain writers and their publishers to showcase recently-published books, focussing upon the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature which is announced in October each year. The Festival also celebrates and explores topics nearer to home, i.e. Cumbrian mountain writing and heritage, both about the place and by those who have based themselves in the County but write about mountain experiences from a worldwide perspective. It is also keen, following useful feedback in its pilot year, to expand the breadth of literature featured to encompass landscape, nature and wilderness writing. The Festival covers fiction, biography, autobiography, expedition reports, guidebooks, picture books, maps and magazines - any published material about the mountains is a candidate for inclusion.

Feedback and media coverage

"It was a really great week of book events. It seemed to grow in richness and significance as the week went on".

"It had the feel of Banff about it - friendly, informal with underlying organisation absolutely spot on".

"The Audience with Audrey Salkeld was beautifully designed and presented".

Lakeland Walker (December 2004/January 2005 issue) said "the first Kendal Mountain Book Festival was such a success one wondered why it had not been inaugurated years ago. With so much going on simultaneously - author readings, lively discussion, lectures by internationally famous names, scores of new films and hectic socialising - Kendal for one long week seemed like the mountain equivalent of the Edinburgh Festival".