John Vaillant has won the 2024 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Vaillant was awarded the $25,000 prize at the annual Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa. The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, awarded annually by the Writers’ Trust of Canada, honours a book of literary merit that has the potential to shape Canadians’ thinking on political life. Previous winners have included Tanya Talaga, Kamal Al-Solaylee, and last year’s winner, Chris Turner.

Vaillant won for his book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast (Knopf Canada), a detailed look at the 2016 wildfire that ravaged the Alberta oil town of Fort McMurray and at the history of the town itself and its reliance on the oil and gas industry.

A jury comprised of past winner Joanna Chiu, past finalist Dale Eisler, and former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne selected this year’s winner and four finalists — Rob Goodman, Benjamin Perrin, Donald J. Savoie, and Astra Taylor.

“This is a deeply compelling, skillfully crafted story packed with information but completely free of ponderous lecturing,” the jury wrote in their citation. “It is terrifying in its honest, textured description of what we have wrought in the name of progress, what we stand to lose, and where we might find the possibility of hope.”