John Vaillant
John H. Vaillant | |
|---|---|
 Vaillant at the 2015 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | June 4, 1962 Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Nationality | American |
John Vaillant 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[]
Vaillant was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has lived in Vancouver since 1998.[1] He is the son of Harvard psychologist George Eman Vaillant, and grandson to the famed anthropologist George Clapp Vaillant.
Writing career[]
His first book, The Golden Spruce,[2] 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 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 a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.[3] The Jaguar's Children received positive reviews from the New York Times and NPR.[4][5]
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[6]
- 2010 The Globe and Mail Best Book for Science 2010, The Tiger
- 2012 Nicolas Bouvier Prize 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.[7]
Bibliography[]
Vaillant is the author of three books:
- 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[]
- ^ "Tiger tale takes richest non-fiction prize". The Globe and Mail, January 31, 2011.
- ^ "Review of The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Valliant". Publishers Weekly. 14 February 2005.
- ^ "Globe columnist among Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize nominees". The Globe and Mail, September 29, 2015.
- ^ Amanda Eyre Ward (13 February 2015). "'The Jaguar's Children,' by John Vaillant". New York Times. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
- ^ Alan Cheuse (20 January 2015). "'The Jaguar's Children' Is Ripped From Heartbreaking Headlines". NPR. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
- ^ "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.
- ^ "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
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- Canadian non-fiction writers
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- 21st-century Canadian novelists
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- 21st-century Canadian male writers
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