We are proud to partner with Lethbridge Public Library and the Southern Alberta Group for the Environment (SAGE) in joining communities across the country in a national celebration of literacy, storytelling, and the literary arts. The Word on the Street Festival is a signature event in southern Alberta that presents established and emerging authors, storytellers, workshops, and other online activities.
Since 2017 we have sponsored an author reading and presentation to ensure important environmental topics are part of the event. In 2023 we are proud to support author John Vaillant and their new book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.
John Vaillant
JOHN VAILLANT’s acclaimed, award-winning non-fiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were #1 national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. He has written for, among others, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus. He lives in Vancouver.
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast
In May 2016, the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta – the seat of the Canadian oil industry – burned to the ground. While the chemistry and physics of wildfires remain unchanged over the last century and a half, climate change has created conditions that give fire exponentially more opportunity to burn. John Vaillant weaves together an enthralling, multifaceted story of how Fort McMurray revealed a new normal of fires burning longer and with greater intensity than at any other time this planet has ever known.
Nonfiction