Maria Coffey
Contributor Banff Centre Press
In 1989 Maria Coffey published her first book, Fragile Edge: Loss on Everest, in Britain. Since its original publication, new editions of the book have appeared in Canada, the US, and Italy, where in 2002 it won the prestigious Premio Letterrario Nazionale “Leggimontagna” prize and was awarded a Special Jury Prize in the Premio ITAS Mountain Film and Book Awards. Maria has since published ten more books, many of them chronicling the world-wide adventures she has shared with her husband, Dag Goering. These books include Sailing Back In Time: A Nostalgic Voyage Along Canada’s West Coast (short-listed for the 1997 Booksellers’ Choice BC Book Award), Visions of the Wild: A Voyage by Kayak Around Vancouver Island (co-authored with Dag Goering and short-listed for the 2002 Roderick Haig Brown BC Book Award), and four children’s books. Maria’s latest book, Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure won the Jon Whyte Award for Mountain Literature at the 2003 Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival and was short-listed for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction BC Book Award. Maria lives with Dag on Protection Island, near Nanaimo, BC.