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John Vaillant

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John H. Vaillant
Vaillant at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Vaillant at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Born1962 (age 61–62)
Massachusetts, U.S.
OccupationJournalist
NationalityCanadian/American
John Vaillant on Bookbits radio talks about The Tiger.

John Vaillant (born 1962) is an American Canadian writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside. He has written both non-fiction and fiction books.

Personal life

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Vaillant was born and raised in Massachusetts and has lived in Vancouver since 1998.[1] He is the son of Harvard psychiatrist and social scientist George Eman Vaillant, and grandson to the famed archaeologist George Clapp Vaillant. He is married to the potter, writer and anthropologist Nora Walsh.[2]

Writing career

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Vaillant's first book, The Golden Spruce,[3] dealt with the felling of the Golden Spruce or Kiidk'yaas on Haida Gwaii by Grant Hadwin. It was a bestseller and won a number of awards.

In 2010, he published The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival about a man-eating tiger incident that took place in 1997, in Russia's Far Eastern Primorsky Krai, where most of the world's Amur tigers live. It was a bestseller and won a number of awards before being translated into 16 languages. Film rights were optioned by Brad Pitt's film company, Plan B.[citation needed]

In 2015, Vaillant published The Jaguar's Children, a novel about an undocumented Mexican immigrant trapped inside the empty tank of a water truck that has been abandoned in the desert by human smugglers. The novel was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize and the Kirkus Fiction Prize. It was shortlisted for the 2015 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.[4] The Jaguar's Children received positive reviews from the New York Times and NPR.[5][6]

Vaillant's fourth book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast,[7] was published in 2023. It follows the events and aftermath of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, which caused billions of dollars worth of damage and destroyed around 2400 homes and forced the evacuation of over 80,000 people,[8] and describes the anthropological history between humans and fire, how it has shaped our societies, and how it now threatens them in the context of climate change.[9] Fire Weather came out June 6, 2023, which opinion writer David Wallace-Wells of The New York Times said was, “unfortunately, exquisitely timed.”[10] The book’s release coincided with the start of several days of hazardous smoke levels and a thick yellowish haze across the eastern United States due to profuse smoke plumes from Canadian wildfires that drifted south. Fire Weather was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction,[11] and shortlisted for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.[12] It was awarded Britain's £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in November 2023.[13]

Awards and honors

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Bibliography

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Vaillant is the author of four books:

  • Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. Knopf. 2023. ISBN 9781524732851.
  • The Jaguar's Children. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. ISBN 978-0544315495.
  • The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 2010. ISBN 978-0307268938.
  • The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. W. W. Norton & Company. 2005. ISBN 978-0393058871.

References

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  1. ^ "Tiger tale takes richest non-fiction prize". The Globe and Mail, January 31, 2011.
  2. ^ Moreau, Vivian (2 June 2006). "John Vaillant wrote a golden egg of a book". Pique Newsmagazine. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  3. ^ "Review of The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant". Publishers Weekly. 14 February 2005.
  4. ^ "Globe columnist among Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize nominees". The Globe and Mail, September 29, 2015.
  5. ^ Amanda Eyre Ward (13 February 2015). "'The Jaguar's Children,' by John Vaillant". New York Times. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  6. ^ Alan Cheuse (20 January 2015). "'The Jaguar's Children' Is Ripped From Heartbreaking Headlines". NPR. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  7. ^ "Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant". Penguin Random House. 23 May 2023.
  8. ^ Karen Bartko & Emily Mertz (4 May 2016). "Fort McMurray wildfire: Shifting weather forces more evacuations". Global News. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  9. ^ "Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant". Penguin Random House. 23 May 2023.
  10. ^ Wallace-Wells, David (7 June 2023). "As Smoke Darkens the Sky, the Future Becomes Clear". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  11. ^ "2023 National Book Awards Finalist for Nonfiction".
  12. ^ Brad Wheeler, "Shortlist for $75,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction includes past winner John Vaillant, scholar Christina Sharpe". The Globe and Mail, September 20, 2023.
  13. ^ a b Creamer, Ella (17 November 2023). "John Vaillant wins Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize with 'highly relevant' work on wildfires". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  14. ^ "John Vaillant's The Tiger wins B.C.'s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction" Archived 2011-03-08 at the Wayback Machine. The Georgia Straight, February 1, 2010.
  15. ^ "Prize Citation for John Vaillant". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. 7 March 2014. Archived from the original on 8 March 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  16. ^ "National Book Award finalists announced". Books+Publishing. 5 October 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
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