“True wilderness has no narrative. It is immediate, and visceral, beyond words at the time, and often beyond description later. So, it speaks to Claire Cameron’s courage and skill as a writer that she has triumphantly wrested such a compelling and profound story out of her journey, both into the wild heart of bear country, and into the terror-filled landscape of a devastating cancer diagnosis.” Trust acclaimed author Helen Humphreys to put into words why you simply can’t miss this show with Claire Cameron, hosted by journalist Christina Frangou. They’ll be delving into Cameron’s astonishing memoir How to Survive a Bear Attack, her follow-up to The Last Neanderthal (a finalist for the 2017 Writers Trust Prize for Fiction). The conversation includes an audience Q & A and book signing, fuelled by Shelf Life Books. You can also place a pre-order for the book, as well as Cameron’s phenomenal backlist, here.
We are grateful to Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible to connect you with Claire Cameron.
Shelley Youngblut
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
Wordfest & Taylor Centre
Claire Cameron’s memoir, How to Survive a Bear Attack, won the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. Her most recent novel, The Last Neanderthal, was a national bestseller, and her second novel, The Bear, also a bestseller, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It won the North 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 was 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, The Millions, and The Guardian, and she is a contributor to The Globe and Mail. She lives in Toronto with her family.
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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.
Shelley Youngblut
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
Wordfest & Taylor Centre
Nicola MacNaughton is the co-owner of Slow Burn Books, Canada’s first brick-and-mortar romance bookstore. With a degree in Marketing and Business Technology Management from UBC, MacNaughton initially worked in sales and marketing; however she couldn’t resist the pull of opening a romance bookstore with her sister Shannon, a venture that aligned perfectly with her love of the genre. Slow Burn Books is a testament to their dedication to fostering a community-focused, safe space for romance readers. MacNaughton’s eclectic taste in romance spans sports, contemporary, dark, fantasy, and even a bit of monster romance. Her ideal day consists of getting lost in the pages of a captivating book. Follow Slow Burn Books on Instagram @slowburn.booksyyc.
Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. A former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM, she was also a frequent contributor to CBC Calgary’s The Eyeopener, The Homestretch, and Daybreak Alberta.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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