About the Author

How to Survive a Bear Attack: A Memoir was published by Knopf Canada in March 2025 in Canada and the U.S. It is a national best seller, one of Spotify’s Best of the Year so far, and the winner of the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction.

CLAIRE CAMERON’s most recent novel, The Last Neanderthal, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. It sold in eleven territories. Her second novel, The Bear, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, sold in ten territories, and was a #1 national bestseller. It won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service, which her first novel, The Line Painter, also won.

Claire has led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound, teaching mountaineering, climbing, and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and she is a monthly contributor to The Globe and Mail. She lives in Toronto.

Related Press 

Skin Cancer Made Me Nocturnal. It was illuminating — My Letter of Recommendation for The New York Times

Life outdoors after a skin cancer diagnosis — a discussion with Matt Galloway on The Current, CBC Radio

How a Skin Cancer Diagnosis Changed My Relationship with the Outdoors — an essay I wrote for Outside Magazine.

My essay in The New Yorker – “Bear” Is About Much More Than Having Sex with a Bear

Citation from the peer review committee, Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction
Neanderthals: They’re Just like Us in The New York Times
10 Women to Watch  from BookPage
Starred review from Publishers Weekly
A Word on Words - Interview with J.T. Ellison on Nashville Public Television
Interview on The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers
The Millions – Life-Long Obsessions: The Millions Interviews Claire Cameron
The Globe and Mail – I’d want to try eating mammoth

More writing