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Claire Cameron | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Cameron at theEden Mills Writers' Festival in 2017 | |
| Born | March 1973 (age 52) |
| Occupation | Novelist, journalist |
| Language | English |
| Relatives | Angus Cameron (father) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Claire Cameron (born March 1973) is a Canadian novelist and journalist.[1]
Her fatherAngus Cameron was a prominent academic at theUniversity of Toronto who founded theDictionary of Old English.[2] Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Cameron attendedNorthern Secondary School (Toronto) andQueen's University for History and Culture (inKingston, Ontario). Cameron was a wilderness instructor forOutward Bound[3] and she worked for The Taylor Statten Camps[4] inAlgonquin Park. Later she interned forSierra Club Books inSan Francisco and co-founded the consulting company Shift Learning[5] inLondon, England. She now resides in Toronto with her husband and two children.[6]
Cameron's first novelThe Line Painter, was published in 2007 byHarperCollins Canada.[7] It won the 2008 Northern Lit Award from theOntario Library Service[8] and was nominated for a 2008Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award for best first novel.[9]Cameron has said in regards to beginning her writing career and specificallyLine Painter, "I almost made an album. I had one decent song for the album. It was about a guy who paints lines on the highway for a job. I wrote that song because it looked to me like painting lines was a simpler way to go about making a living. I nearly finished my album. I was recording my painting lines song, but I kept messing it up (because I can't sing or play). I got so frustrated, I ended up smashing my guitar around. This is the only rock star-ish thing I've ever done. After the smashing, all I had left was a half decent idea about painting lines. I'm better at typing than I am at guitar, so I sat down and started to write."[6]
Cameron's second novel,The Bear, was published in February 2014 byLittle Brown & Company in the United States,Random House in Canada, andHarvill Secker/Vintage in the United Kingdom & Commonwealth.[10] Cameron was leading a trip through Algonquin Park a year after thebear attack on Lake Opeongo of October 11, 1991, which ended in the death of two adults. The stories she heard continued to haunt her years later and eventually became the basis for The Bear.[11] In The Bear, Cameron re-imagines the events of October 1991 by adding two small children into the mix. It is a bestseller in Canada[12] and was recently long listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize).[13]
Cameron's third novel "The Last Neanderthal" was published (April 25, 2017) by Little Brown & Co in the U.S., Penguin Random House in Canada, and SEM Libri in Italian, and forthcoming from Cargo/De Bezige Bij in Dutch and Forlaget Bazar in Danish.[14] She was profiled[15] inThe New York Times.
Her memoirHow to Survive a Bear Attack was published by Knopf Canada in March 2025.[16] The book won theGovernor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the2025 Governor General's Awards.[17]
Cameron is a monthly contributor toThe Globe and Mail.[18] She also writes reviews, interviews, and articles forThe New Yorker,[19]Outside Magazine,[20]The Millions,[21]The Rumpus,[22]The Globe and Mail,[23] andThe Los Angeles Review of Books.[24]
Cameron has also written a collection of last words fromTexas inmates' final statements and an Op-Ed about tree planting forThe New York Times.[25][26]
Her short story,Jude the Brave,[27] won a silver medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards.[28]
