Sarah Louise Butler has lived in the Kootenays since 2003, where she’s raised a son, run a catering company, and been gratefully immersed in the natural year-round beauty of the region, encompassing the traditional, ongoing and unceded territories of the the Ktunaxa, the Sinixt and the Syilx.

She describes her books as ‘Geographic Fiction’ : novels so deeply rooted in a specific landscape that they couldn’t take place anywhere else. Her debut novel, The Wild Heavens, was published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2020. It’s a love story, a family drama, and an ode to the human and non-human inhabitants of the Inland Temperate Rainforest in BC. After its release, she was named a CBC Writer to Watch in 2020. The French edition, Toutes Les Créatures, was published by Éditions Phébus.

Her second novel, Rufous and Calliope, featuring treehouses, twins, and train-hopping, was published by Douglas&Mcintyre in September 2025. She recently toured France and Belgium with the French edition, Ciel Noir, Coeurs Battants.