In my previous life, I worked as a primatologist, which is just a fancy word for someone who studies monkeys in the jungle. For one whole year, I was like a male version of Jane Goodall, minus the physical endurance, scientific breakthroughs and universal acclaim.
I traded the real jungle for the concrete one a long time ago, but my experiences with wild animals still inform a lot of my work. Most of my writing explores one corner or another of our fraught, curious and ever-evolving relationship with the natural world.
My newest book is The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, the true story of a remarkable family of chimpanzees who spent decades as test subjects in a biomedical research lab, and who are now slowly recovering in an animal sanctuary near Montreal. I am also the author of The Riverbones (Surinam in the U.K.), which is a travel memoir based on my five-month search for a rare blue frog in the jungles of Suriname.
While you’re snooping around, make sure to connect with me through Twitter and Facebook. That way, we can continue to learn from each other long after you’ve forgotten what the word ‘primatologist’ means. Also, check out my blog and feel free to add your own two cents about the human/animal relationship.
As for the details, I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, I am a Gold National Magazine Award winner and my feature writing appears in The Walrus, Utne Reader, explore, Canadian Geographic, The Globe and Mail and The Guardian, among others. My work has also been anthologized in Cabin Fever: The Best New Canadian Non-Fiction. Oh, and I am an occasional science columnist on CBC Radio One.
