John Vaillant
John H. Vaillant | |
---|---|
![]() Vaillant at the 2015 Texas Book Festival | |
Born | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
Occupation | Journalist |
Nationality | American |
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John Vaillant is an American 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
Vaillant was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has lived in Vancouver for the past thirteen years.[1]
Writing career
His first book, The Golden Spruce, dealt with the felling of the Golden Spruce or Kiidk'yaas on Haida Gwaii by Grant Hadwin.
His 2010 work, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival is about a man-eating tiger incident that happened in the 1990s in Russia's Far Eastern Primorsky Krai, where most of the world's Amur tigers live. It is a mixture of investigative journalism, social history, geography and natural writing. It won a number of awards and was selected for the 2012 edition of CBC Radio's Canada Reads, defended by lawyer and television personality Anne-France Goldwater.
His next book was The Jaguar's Children (2015), a novel about an illegal Mexican immigrant trapped inside the empty tank of a water truck that has been abandoned in the desert by human smugglers. The novel was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.[2]
Writing style
Vaillant is known for focusing on environmental issues - such as trees in the northwest, nearly-extinct tigers, and GMO corn in Mexico - and mixing that with stories about crime or violence.
Awards and honors
- 2005 Governor General's Award, The Golden Spruce
- 2005 Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, The Golden Spruce
- 2010 British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, The Tiger[3]
- 2010 Globe and Mail Best Book for Science 2010, The Tiger
- 2012 Nicolas Bouvier Price in Saint Malo, France, The Tiger (French translation)
- 2014 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Nonfiction, achievement award valued at $150,000 the largest of its kind.[4]
References
- ↑ "Tiger tale takes richest non-fiction prize". The Globe and Mail, January 31, 2011.
- ↑ "Globe columnist among Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize nominees". The Globe and Mail, September 29, 2015.
- ↑ "John Vaillant's The Tiger wins B.C.'s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction". The Georgia Straight, February 1, 2010.
- ↑ "Prize Citation for John Vaillant". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
External links
- John Vaillant at Library of Congress Authorities, with 4 catalogue records