CITY/TOWN: Vancouver

DATE OF BIRTH: April 23, 1966

PLACE OF BIRTH: Torrance, California

ARRIVAL IN CANADA: 1982

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

The Wind is not a River (HarperCollins 2014). Novel. ISBN: 9780062279972; ISBN10: 0062279971; Imprint: Ecco ; On Sale: 1/7/2014; Format: Hardcover; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 320; $26.99

The Ice Passage: A True Story of Ambition, Disaster, and Endurance in the Arctic Wilderness, Doubleday, 2009

Shadow Of the Bear (non-fiction), Viking Canada, 2006

Hail Mary Corner (novel), Beach Holme, 2001

Cowboy: The Legend and the Legacy, Greystone Books, 2000

Long Beach, Clayoquot and Beyond, Raincoast Books, 1997. With photos by Bob Herger.

Spirit Transformed, A Journey from Tree to Totem, (with Roy Henry Vickers) Raincoast Books, 1996

AWARDS: Two consecutive SATW Lowell Thomas Silver Awards for Best North American Travel Essay. Three-time winner of Northern Lights Awards for Excellence in Travel Journalism.

BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS:

Brian Payton's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Globe and Mail, Islands, Canadian Geographic and Literary Trips, Following in the Footsteps of Fame.

His first play, Weed, premiered at the 1999 Victoria Fringe Festival, and was produced by the Denman Theatre Conspiracy on Denman Island, British Columbia (Juan Barker, director) where Payton lived for a few years. From the program: "On the road home from a Reno stag party, three friends take a wrong turn near Weed, California, and find themselves trapped in a moral dilemma that threatens their friendship, identity, and ultimately their lives. They discover that sometimes, being in the wrong place at the wrong time "doesn't just ruin your day, it kills you then rewrites your whole stinking history."

After months of preparation, Brian Payton travelled to the western Arctic Archipelago in the summer of 2007 to collect information about climate change. That winter he returned to the coast of Banks Island on the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen. These experiences prompted him to recount the final voyage of HMS Investigator into the arctic in the 1850s when the ship became trapped in polar ice, giving rise to his creative non-fiction work, The Ice Passage (Doubleday $35). 978-0-385-66532-2

He has lived in Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, and Alaska.

[BCBW 2014] "Fiction" "Outdoors"