Join us for a memorable evening with acclaimed author Claire Cameron, as she discusses her new, bestselling memoir, HOW TO SURVIVE A BEAR ATTACK, with our own Holly Hogan.

Part memoir of her own fight to survive the cancer that killed her father, part riveting investigation into the 1991 bear attack in Algonquin Park that killed two campers and has obsessed Cameron ever since, How to Survive a Bear Attack is at once a deeply personal work that reaches into all our relationships with nature, the environment, and our own mortality. Who better for Claire to chat with than writer and wildife biologist Holly Hogan?

This is going to be an unforgettable night, and a real treat for St. John’s.

Featuring music by special guest Valmy.

Books will be available for sale; cash bar.

Seats are limited! Reserve yours today.

 

This event is supported and subsidized by the Canada Council for the Arts Public Outreach Program.

 

CLAIRE CAMERON’s most recent novel, The Last Neanderthal, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Bear, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a #1 national bestseller. It won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service, which her first novel, The Line Painter, also won.

Claire has led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound, teaching mountaineering, climbing, and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and she is a monthly contributor to The Globe and Mail. She lives in Toronto.

HOLLY HOGAN is a writer and seabird biologist. During her decades as a scientist, she has spent a thousand days at sea conducting seabird surveys and providing educational programming with expedition teams. Her work has taken her from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and every latitude in between. She has provided expertise on seabirds and marine plastic issues for various radio and documentary series. Her book Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist was short-listed for several awards including the 2023 Governor-General’s Award for non-fiction, and won the 2023 Winterset Award.  She lives in St. John’s Newfoundland.

In this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron confronts the rare genetic mutation that gave her cancer by investigating an equally rare and terrifying event—a predatory bear attack.

When Claire Cameron was nine years old, her father told her he was dying. In the years after he was gone, she overcame her grief among the rivers and lakes of Algonquin Park, a vast Canadian wilderness. Around that same time, in 1991, a couple was killed in a rare predatory black bear attack in the park—an event that shocked and haunted Claire.

Years later, with children of her own, Cameron was diagnosed with the same kind of deadly skin cancer as her father. Caught in a second wave of grief, she was told by her doctor, “the ideal exposure to UV light is none.” No longer able to venture into the wilderness as she once had, she again became obsessed with the bear attack in Algonquin Park. How could terror rip through such a beautiful place? Could she separate truth from fiction? She headed north to investigate.

Seamlessly weaving together nature writing with true crime investigation in this unflinching account of recovery, How to Survive a Bear Attack is at once an intimate portrait of an extraordinary animal, a bracing chronicle of pain, obsession, and love, and a profoundly moving exploration of how we can understand and survive the wildness that lives inside us.

 

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Valmy is a St. John’s-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who’s been following the ocean and making home on the East Coast. Exploring themes of wonder, loss, and healing, she uses her folk-influenced music to tell stories about loving and stumbling your way through the dark. Valmy creates and performs by weaving nature-inspired melodic swells and atmospheric harmonies with her contemplative writing. Her debut full-length album ‘The In Between’ (2023) was warmly received by listeners and supported her tour across Newfoundland, The Maritimes, Quebec, and Ontario. Awarded MusicNL’s 2024 ‘Solo Artist of the Year’, Valmy continues to connect with listeners and audiences.