Robert Macfarlane, whose work deals with the relationship between humans and the natural environments we live in, has been named the winner of the inaugural Weston International Award.

The annual $75,000 award is granted by the Writers’ Trust of Canada – its first for international writers. The award was launched earlier this year, and aims to recognize the career achievement of an international writer in literary nonfiction.

Macfarlane, a fellow of Emmanuel College and a professor of literature and environmental humanities at the University of Cambridge, has published six nonfiction books over the last 20 years, including the prize-winning Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination and Underland: A Deep Time Journey. He is also co-author, with Jackie Morris, of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, published in Canada by House of Anansi Press. His forthcoming work, called Is a River Alive?, has at its heart the idea “that rivers, forests, and mountains are living beings, and that as such they have rights which should be recognized both in imagination and in law,” he has said. Publication is expected for 2025.

In their citation, the jury said that Macfarlane writes “in prose as clear and flowing as a mountain stream,” and that “he draws on history, science, mythology, biography, and his own travels to interrogate the forces shaping human relationships to place.”

Macfarlane was chosen by the award’s two-stage selection process: first, an international advisory committee, comprised of U.K. broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, writer Pico Iyer, and author and former editor of The New York Times Book Review Sam Tanenhaus, created a not-publicized longlist of writers; then, a Canadian jury, comprised of writers Kamal Al-Solaylee, Denise Chong, Wayne Grady, Charlotte Gray, and Kate Harris, chose the winner.

Macfarlane will give a short talk at an event in Toronto on September 18 called The Weston International Award Presents: An Evening with Robert Macfarlane.