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John Vaillant Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

John Vaillant

John Vaillant

John Vaillant Biography

John Vaillant was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has lived in Vancouver for the past thirteen years. He is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Outside, and Men's Journal, among others. Of particular interest to Vaillant are stories that explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world. His work in this and other fields has taken him to five continents and five oceans.

His first book, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (Norton, 2005), was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction (Canada).

His second book, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf, 2010) was an international bestseller and has been translated into 15 languages. Film rights have been optioned by Plan B, Brad Pitt's production company.

In 2014, Vaillant won Yale University's Windham Campbell prize for nonfiction (worldwide English).

John Vaillant's website

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Interview

In a short video, John Vaillant explains how a career writing nonfiction led him up to writing his first novel, The Jaguar's Children, narrated by Héctor who is trapped inside an abandoned water truck, sealed to hide its human cargo, on the US-Mexico border.

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Books by this Author

Books by John Vaillant at BookBrowse
Fire Weather jacket The Jaguar's Children jacket The Tiger jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for John Vaillant but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Daniel Alarcon

    Daniel Alarcon

    Born in Lima, Peru in 1977, Alarcón was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Peru, and in 2013 served as a Fellow in the Investigative... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Jaguar's Children

    Try:
    At Night We Walk in Circles
    by Daniel Alarcon

  • Josh Barkan

    Josh Barkan

    Josh Barkan was born in Santa Monica, California. At the age of three he moved to Iowa City, where his mother taught comparative literature and his father political science at the University of Iowa. He spent a number of ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Jaguar's Children

    Try:
    Mexico
    by Josh Barkan

We recommend 14 similar authors


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