John N. Maclean, an award-winning author and journalist, was with The Chicago Tribune for 30 years, most of that time as a Washington correspondent, before quitting more than two decades ago to write books. Starting with Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, Maclean has written five books about fatal wildland fires and is working on a sixth, about the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona that took the lives of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots. The work has taken him on many journeys across fire country, from California to Pennsylvania.

His family is from Montana and his initial interest in fire came from living with it and from his father, Norman’s, recounting of a famous western fire in his own book, Young Men and Fire, which the younger Maclean helped bring to publication after his father’s death.

During his newspaper career he spent more than a decade as the Tribune’s diplomatic correspondent; he was one of the “Kissinger 14,” the journalists who regularly traveled with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during the era of shuttle diplomacy. Maclean, an avid fly-fisherman, currently divides his time between Washington, D.C., and a family cabin at Seeley Lake, Montana. His wife, Frances, is a member of the Society of Women Geographers.