Canyon
Hohenstein

Canyon Hohenstein was born and raised in Montana, where he spent seven seasons working as a wildland firefighter. The defining moment of his career came when he was assigned to lead a 20-man inmate fire crew — 17 incarcerated men and three prison guards from the Montana State Prison — as they fought to contain a wildfire deep in the Swan Valley.

What began as an assignment became a reckoning. Eight months later, Canyon sat down to look up the crimes of the men he'd worked beside. What he found staggered him. Several were convicted of serious violent crimes. One had a life sentence. And yet, on the fireline, he'd known them as kind, hard-working, and deeply human.

That contradiction — can you admire someone who has done terrible things? — became the engine of Who Tames the Flames? It's a question Canyon is still answering.

After making the difficult decision to end his firefighting career before it ended him, Canyon turned his focus entirely to writing. He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Montana, has done HIV testing in Uganda, was mugged in Nairobi, and now splits his time between Belgrade, Montana and Madrid, Spain.

He also publishes The Burn Scars We Bear — a newsletter offering dispatches on redemption, endurance, and courage for a burning world.