Born in South Africa, Marq de Villiers is a veteran Canadian journalist and the author of twelve books on exploration, history, politics, and travel, including Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (winner of the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction), Down the Volga in a Time of Troubles, and Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires, written with Sheila Hirtle. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and through eastern Europe and spent many years as Editor and then Publisher of Toronto Life magazine. More recently he was Editorial Director of WHERE Magazines International.

Sheila Hirtle is an experienced editor and researcher with a background in fine arts, design, advertising and journalism. Her projects have included a wide-ranging study of African art and music, and she has for a number of years provided writers with extensively researched dossiers for works of historical non-fiction. She is the author of House of Imagination, a book on architecture, and has co-authored four books with Marq.

Marq and Sheila currently live in Port Medway, Nova Scotia, but travel the world to research their book projects.

Forthcoming:

Dangerous World
(Penguin, 2008)

Non-fiction:

Timbuktu
The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold
(McClelland & Stewart and Walker & Company, Fall 2007)
co-written with Sheila Hirtle

Witch in the Wind:
The True Story of the Bluenose
(Lead Title, Thomas Allen Publishers, Spring 2007)

The Heartbreak Grape:
A Journey in Search of the Perfect Pinot Noir
(McArthur & Company, 2006, HarperCollins, 1993)

• Short-listed, The Governor General's Award, 1993
• Short-listed, The Julia Child Cookbook Award, 1993
  (Literary Food Writing)
• Short-listed, The James Beard Award, 1993
  (Best Book: Wine & Spirits)

Windswept:
The Story of Wind and Weather
(McClelland & Stewart and Walker & Company, Fall 2005, Apogeo, Italy, 2007, Optioned by Alta Nova Pictures (Canada) )

A Dune Adrift:
The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island
(McClelland & Stewart and Walker & Company, 2004)
co-written with Sheila Hirtle

• 2005 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award

Sahara:
A Natural History
(Walker & Company, 2002, and McClelland & Stewart, 2003)
co-written with Sheila Hirtle

Water:
The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
(revised edition McClelland & Stewart, 2003)
Now in print in 11 languages.

• 1999 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction
• 1999 Canadian Science Writers Award
• Short-listed, The 23rd annual Evelyn Richardson Prize
   for Non-Fiction, 2000

Into Africa:
A Journey Through the Ancient Empires
(Key Porter Books and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
co-written with Sheila Hirtle

Blood Traitors:
A True Saga of the American Revolution
(HarperCollins, 1996)
co-written with Sheila Hirtle

Down the Volga in a Time of Troubles:
A Journey Through Post-Perestroika Russia
(HarperCollins and Penguin, 1990)

White Tribe Dreaming:
Apartheid's Bitter Roots as Witnessed by Eight Generations
of an Afrikaner Family
(Macmillan Canada, Penguin USA, and Penguin UK, February 1989)

• Winner of the first annual Alan Paton Award
  for Non-Fiction