Human civilization has been a death knell for too many other lives on our shared planet. These three luminous works of nonfiction grapple with the ever-evolving relationships between humans and animals, and offer perspectives on climate change beyond human exceptionalism. Forced out of their natural habitats, synanthropes are wild animals who’ve found ways to survive and thrive in urban spaces. From crows to raccoons, scientist Dan Werb’s Our Wild Familiars describes the ingenious ways they’ve adapted. As the climate emergency churns through the biodiversity of our planet, Andrew Westoll explores the practical and ethical quandaries of the modern zoo in Born to Be Wild. And in Endings, Neil Griffin takes us on an eye-opening, poetically lyrical, defiantly hopeful journey through the global history of extinction. Moderated by Laura Lynch.
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NEIL GRIFFIN is a writer and former wildlife biologist. His nature writing has appeared in magazines across Canada, and he is the author of two poetry chapbooks. He has an MFA in writing from the University of Victoria and is a teacher on Vancouver Island, where he works with the most dangerous wild animals imaginable: teenagers.
LAURA LYNCH is a journalist and host who has won the prestigious Nieman fellowship from Harvard University, awards from the British Bar Association, the Canadian Bar Association, and Amnesty International, among others. She is the host of What on Earth, a CBC Radio series covering climate change and climate solutions.
DAN WERB is an award-winning writer and epidemiologist whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times and many other outlets in Canada and the US. His previous book, The Invisible Siege, won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction in 2022.
ANDREW WESTOLL is a former primatologist-in-training and current Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, of Creative Writing and English at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His previous nonfiction book, the national bestseller The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, was awarded the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction.
