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Join author Trina Moyles to celebrate the launch of her new book, Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival (Knopf Canada) which will be released on Jan. 6, 2026.
In conversation with acclaimed writer, Conor Kerr, author of Prairie Edge, Old Gods, Avenue of Champions, and other titles.
In partnership with the Edmonton Public Library and Porch Light Books, who will be selling books at the event.
BLACK BEAR: A STORY OF SIBLINGHOOD AND SURVIVAL
When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father, a wildlife biologist known in Peace River as “the bear guy,” brought home an orphaned black bear cub for a night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. This brief but unforgettable encounter spurred Trina’s lifelong fascination with Ursus americanus—the most populous bear on the northern landscape, often considered a nuisance to human society. As a child roaming the shores of the Peace in the footsteps of her beloved older brother, she understood bears to be invisible entities: always present but mostly hidden and worthy of respect. Growing up during the oil boom of the 1990s, the threats in the siblings’ hard-drinking resource town were more human, dividing them from a natural reverence for the land, and eventually, from each other.
After years of working for human rights organizations, Trina returned to northern Alberta for a job as a fire tower lookout, while her brother worked in the oil sands, vulnerable to a boom-and-bust economy and substance addiction. When she was assigned to a tower in a wildlife corridor, bears were alarmingly visible and plentiful, wandering metres away on the other side of an electrified fence surrounding the tower. Over four summers, Trina begins to move beyond fear and observe the extraordinary essence of the maligned black bear—a keystone species who is as subject to the environmental consequences of the oil economy as humans. At the same time, she searches for common ground with her brother on the land that bonded them.
ADVANCED PRAISE FOR BLACK BEAR
“There is so much conflict in the world. Oil extraction, climate change, wildlife management, the pandemic. . . . What if there is a way to co-exist? . . . . [Black Bear] is a heart-rending and timely story about how relationships can evolve. I loved it.” —Claire Cameron, author of How to Survive a Bear Attack
“This may be the best book I’ve ever read about the things that live in our hearts while haunting our nights. Brilliant writing that sometimes brought me to tears . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.” —Kevin Van Tighem, author of Bears Without Fear
“A beautifully wrought meditation on fear, kinship and coexistence.” —Omar Mouallem, author of Praying to the West
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE BOOK, OR TO PRE-ORDER:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/742032/black-bear-by-trina-moyles/9781039010161
FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT TRINA AT 587.988.0850, OR [email protected].
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strathcona Library, 8315 Calgary Trl NW, Edmonton, AB T6E, Canada
Tickets
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