Booked! Fernie Writers Series Presents John Vaillant

The Booked! Fernie Writers' Series is a firm favourite on the Fernie cultural calendar featuring some of Canada's best and brightest literary talents.

These events are popular and seats fill up fast; everyone is welcome to attend. These are free events, however a suggested donation of $10 assists in bringing in new and exciting authors for each event.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

The evening begins at 7pm with refreshments and cash bar, author reading with Q&A hosted by Fernie's Angie Abdou at 8pm.

John Vaillant is an award winning non-fiction writer, novelist, and journalist. His latest book is ‘Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast’ is a stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

John's acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Vaillant has received the Governor General’s Literary Award, British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He has written for, among others, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus. He lives in Vancouver.

The Fernie Heritage Library has welcomed some of the biggest names in Canadian writing for the Booked! series, a highly anticipated reception that includes an author reading and Q&A followed by live music and lively discussion. The events draw crowds of up to 100 to fill the beautiful Fernie Heritage Library for an engaging evening celebrating the undeniable talents of each guest author.