Paula’s Bio

Paula Wild is an award-win­ning au­thor of sev­en books. Her most re­cent re­lease, Return of the Wolf: Conflict & Coexistence (Douglas & McIntyre 2018) re­ceived a Silver Medal for Environment/​Ecology from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous (Douglas & McIntyre 2013) was the Gold win­ner for Foreword Review’s Nature Book of the Year in the USA and Finalist for the BC Book Prizes’ Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award (Canada)

Wild is also the au­thor of The Comox Valley (Harbour Publishing 2006); One River, Two Cultures: A History of the Bella Coola Valley  (Harbour Publishing 2004) and Sointula Island Utopia (Harbour Publishing 1995). Sointula re­ceived an award from the BC Historical Federation, cit­ing the book as “a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to BC his­tory.” All Wild’s books have been BC bestsellers.

Commissioned books in­clude The Filberg Heritage Lodge & Park (Filberg Heritage Lodge and Park Association 2009) and Memories: One Hundred Years of Living (Don Plewes 2010).

 Known for her con­ver­sa­tion­al and en­ga­ging style, Wild’s work has ap­peared in British Columbia Magazine, Canada’s History Magazine, the Vancouver Sun and nu­mer­ous oth­er peri­od­ic­als and an­tho­lo­gies. She has writ­ten more than 1,000 arti­cles on top­ics as di­verse as lady bugs, health, teen sui­cide and con artists. Many arti­cles have been cov­er stor­ies, sev­er­al have been nom­in­ated for the National Magazine Awards. “On a Mission for Life” re­ceived the John Alexander Award.

Wild began her writ­ing ca­reer as a stringer for the North Island Gazette, covered arts for the Comox Valley Record for 25 years and was ed­it­or of the newspaper’s About Town and Comox by the Sea sup­ple­ments for sev­er­al years.

Wild has feasted on fresh oo­ligan grease in the Bella Coola Valley, paddled the piranha-in­fes­ted wa­ters of the Amazon River and lived off the grid in a squatter’s cab­in in the rain­forest of north­ern Vancouver Island. She heard her first wolf howl while camp­ing on Brooks Peninsula and, years later, was woken up in the middle of the night by a cou­gar scream­ing in the green­space be­hind her home in Courtenay.

As an au­thor, Wild is in­trigued by the re­la­tion­ships between people, places and the nat­ur­al world. Travel has taken her to 11 coun­tries on four con­tin­ents where she has ex­per­i­enced dif­fer­ent land­scapes and cul­tures in loc­a­tions as di­verse as Malta, Brazil, Romania and Tanzania. She’s fas­cin­ated by the ways people ad­apt to or modi­fy the land and how the roles of hunter and prey shift between hu­mans and wild­life ac­cord­ing to circumstance.

 

 

Banner photo: Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Photo by Paula Wild

 

Click on the nav­ig­a­tion links be­low to read about the books Paula has written.