bio

Charles Montgomery was born in 1968. He spent his formative years on a farm in North Cowichan, Vancouver Island. He has been a writer and photojournalist since 1996. His interest in people, landscape, science and myth have led him to stories on four continents. Charles has followed leads to Nunavut, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong, Japan, Peru, Fiji, Colombia, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Whether covering conflict in the Andean foothills or exploring sled dog etiquette in the Arctic, Charles has won accolades for his reportage and taut storytelling.

His first book, The Last Heathen , Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia , won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. Jurors called it “an irresistible adventure in discovery, a journey into rough terrain and a revelation of the power of ancestral stories across cultural divides." Maclean's Magazine enthused: "Beautifully written and utterly astounding....A study in the transforming power of myth, and the unpredictable consequences of colliding cultures, The Last Heathen is superb." The book has also won the Hubert Evans Prize for Non-fiction and was short-listed for two Writers' Trust of Canada awards.

The book was published internationally as The Shark God in 2006.

Charles is also a contributor to Way Out There, Explore Magazine's anthology of the best Canadian adventure writing. Since 2001, he has won four Western Magazine Awards, a National Magazine Award and the 2003 American Society of Travel Writer's Lowell Thomas Silver Award for best North American travel story.

Charles lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he is a member of the FCC, a collective of literary journalists who use stories about the world to shed light on contemporary issues. He has been influenced by the writing of Malcolm Lowry, Laurens van der Post, Bruce Chatwin and Carlos Fuentes.