Author of Wake-Up Call on Water to Speak in Fredericton
Author: Communications
Posted on Mar 12, 2012
Category: UNB Fredericton
A journalist by profession, Marq de Villiers became an expert on water in 1999 when he published the award-winning wake-up call, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, and despite all the grim and disturbing things he learned in the process, Mr. de Villiers remains hopeful about our options for the future.
A Conversation with Marq de Villiers, hosted by the University of New Brunswick’s Andrews Initiative, will take place on Thursday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Wu Conference Centre, UNB Fredericton. Admission is free.
A native of South Africa, Mr. de Villiers has been a journalist “for more years than he can count”. He worked first in newspapers as a foreign correspondent in cities such as Moscow and Cape Town. Later, he became editor, then publisher of Toronto Life magazine, and then moved on as editorial director of Los Angeles-based WHERE Magazines International.
Mr. de Villiers lives in Nova Scotia and has written more than a dozen books on history, travel, and natural history, often times collaborating with his wife, writer Sheila Hirtle. His most recent book Our Way Out: First Principles for a Post-Apocalyptic World, addresses the problems surrounding climate change and possible solutions.
In 1989, he won the inaugural Alan Paton award for non-fiction for his book White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots. In 1999, he received the Governor-General’s Award for Non-Fiction and the Canadian Science Writers Award for Water: The Fate of our Most Precious Resource. For his book, The Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose, Mr. de Villiers received both the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction and the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction, in 2008.
In 2010, Mr. de Villiers was installed as a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to social and political discourse, notably as an award-winning non-fiction author.
Marq de Villiers is the third speaker in the Andrews Initiative Year of Water Speakers Series at UNB. The fourth speaker, Kim Sturgess, founder and CEO of Alberta WaterSMART, will deliver her talk on April 10.
Additional speakers and events are planned for the fall. For more information on the Year of the Water Speaker Series, visit www.unb.ca/initiatives/andrews .
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