John Vaillant

John Vaillant’s writing takes up the challenge of describing the intricate marriage between people and the environment, and the intoxicating splendor of the flora and fauna of the natural world. A freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside, he is the author of two-bestselling nonfiction works, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. The Golden Spruce won the 2005 Governor General’s Award for nonfiction, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes. The Tiger was selected for the 2012 edition of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Both are masterworks of long-form investigative journalism that combine a deft command of technical detail with a storyteller’s ability to place human activity in a dynamic and shifting cultural context. He is a writer of beautiful, inclusive, even magical sentences, in which the multilayered strains of culture, place, and people are rendered in sonically graceful prose.