John Vaillant (born 1962) is an American Canadian writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside.

[citation needed] In 2015, Vaillant published The Jaguar's Children, a novel about an undocumented Mexican immigrant trapped inside the empty tank of a water truck that has been abandoned in the desert by human smugglers.

[4] The Jaguar's Children received positive reviews from the New York Times and NPR.

It follows the events and aftermath of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, which caused billions of dollars worth of damage and destroyed around 2400 homes and forced the evacuation of over 80,000 people,[8] and describes the anthropological history between humans and fire, how it has shaped our societies, and how it now threatens them in the context of climate change.

[9] Fire Weather came out June 6, 2023, which opinion writer David Wallace-Wells of The New York Times said was, “unfortunately, exquisitely timed.”[10] The book’s release coincided with the start of several days of hazardous smoke levels and a thick yellowish haze across the eastern United States due to profuse smoke plumes from Canadian wildfires that drifted south.