Photo Credit: Paul Orenstein
Address:
PO Box 180
Port Medway, NS
B0J 2T0 Canada
Phone Number:
(902) 354-7181
Email:
jacobus [at] ca [dot] inter [dot] net
c/o Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
Marq de Villiers is a veteran journalist, magazine editor and writer, who has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, South Africa, and other places. He has travelled extensively, especially in Africa, and has written thirteen books on travel, history and natural history, some of them co-authored with Sheila Hirtle. He has also "ghosted" several others for subjects as varied as a convicted (but later freed) murderer and a deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. He won a Governor General's Award in 1999 for his Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non Fiction for A Dune Adrift, a book on Sable Island, written with Sheila Hirtle. His Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose, published in 2007, won the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction as well as the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction. Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold was published in the fall of 2007, and his most recent book, Dangerous World, was published by Penguin in spring 2008 and by Thomas Dunne-St. Martin's Press in the U.S., under the title, The End.
- Dangerous World. Penguin, 2008. ISBN 978-0670065684.
- Click here for more information.
- Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold. McClelland & Stewart, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7710-2646-1.
- Click here for more information.
- Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose. Thomas Allen and Co. 2007. ISBN 0-88762-224-0.
- Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather. McClelland & Stewart, 2006. ISBN 0-7710-2644-7.
- Nominated for the Evelyn Richardson Prize for non-fiction.
- Click here for more information.
- A Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island. McClelland & Stewart, 2004, co-written with Sheila Hirtle. ISBN 0-7710-2642-0.
- Winner of the Evelyn Richardson Prize for non-fiction.
- Sahara: The Life of the Great Desert. McClelland & Stewart, and Walker and Co. 2003. Co-written with Sheila Hirtle. ISBN 0-7710-2639-0.
- Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. (Revised edition). McClelland & Stewart, 2003. ISBN 0771026412.
- Now in print in 11 languages
- Won the 1999 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction
- Won the 1999 Canadian Science Writers Award
- Nominated for the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction.
- Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires. Co-written with Sheila Hirtle. Key Porter Books, October 1997. ISBN 1-55013-884-7.
- Blood Traitors: A True Saga of the American Revolution. Co-authored with Sheila Hirtle, HarperCollins, 1996. ISBN 0-000255424-0.
- Down the Volga: A Journey Through Mother Russia in a Time of Troubles. ISBN 0-67084-353-9.
- The Heartbreak Grape: A Search for the Perfect Pinot Noir. HarperCollins, revised edition MacArthur and Co 2007. ISBN 0-06258-523-1.
- Short-listed for the Governor General's Award
- Short-listed for the Julia Child Cookbook Awards (Literary Food Writing)
- Short-listed for the James Beard Awards (Best Book: Wine & Spirits)
- White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's bitter roots: notes of an eighth-generation Afrikaner. Penguin USA (Paper), February 1989. ISBN 0-67081-794-5.
- Winner of the first annual Alan Paton Award for non-fiction.
