Marq de Villiers

Marq de Villiers, CM is an award-winning Canadian writer and journalist. He now chiefly writes non-fiction books on scientific topics. In the past he also worked as a magazine editor and foreign correspondent.^[1]

Biography

Marq de Villiers was born in 1940 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He and his wife, the writer Sheila Hirtle live in Eagle Head, Nova Scotia.^[2] They often collaborate together on books.

He won a Governor General's Award in 1999 for his Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non Fiction for A Dune Adrift, a book on Sable Island, written with Sheila Hirtle. His Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose, published in 2007, won the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction as well as the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction. Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold, was published in the fall of 2007, and his most recent book, Dangerous World, was published by Penguin in spring 2008 and by Thomas Dunne-St. Martin's Press in the U.S., under the title, The End.^[3] In 2010, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.^[4] In 2011 his book, Our Way Out was published, dealing with the problems surrounding climate change, and possible solutions.

Selected publications

• White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots As Witnessed by Eight Generations of an Afrikaner Family (1987)
• Down the Volga in a Time of Troubles: A Journey Revealing the People and Heartland of Post-Perestroika Russia (1992)
• The Heartbreak Grape: A California Winemaker's Search for the Perfect Pinot Noir (1994)
• Closer to the Sun: An Autobiography (with Garth Drabinsky) (1995)
• Blood Traitors (with Sheila Hirtle) (1997)
• Into Africa: A Journey through the Ancient Empires (with Sheila Hirtle) (1997)
• Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (2001)
• Guide to America's Outdoors: Eastern Canada (2001)
• Sahara: A National History (with Sheila Hirtle) (2002)
• The Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose (2007)
• Dangerous world: natural disasters, manmade catastrophes, and the future of human survival (2008)
• Our Way Out: First Principles for a Post-Apocalyptic World (2011)

References

1. ^ Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. Marq de Villiers.
2. ^ Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2008.
3. ^ "WFNS: Marq de Villiers". http://www.writers.ns.ca/Writers/mdevilliers.html. 
4. ^ "Order of Canada appointments". http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=13725&lan=eng. 

External links

• WorldCat Identities page

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Name	Villiers, Marq De
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Date of birth	1940
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