Bridging to Literacy has been extremely fortunate to be able to bring Award Winning Indigenous Writer/Speaker Richard Wagamese to Ashcroft and Spences Bridge on March 19.
The locations for this event are at Ashcroft Secondary School at 1:30 p.m. and at Spences Bridge at 5 p.m. (pot luck light meal afterwards). This event is free to the public at both locations.
Richard Wagamese is one of Canada’s foremost Native authors and storytellers since 1979. His impressive body of work includes six novels, a book of poetry and five non-fiction titles including two memoirs and an anthology of his newspaper columns.
An Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, Richard has garnered a number of awards in different fields over the course of his career. In 1991, he became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for column writing. His debut novel, Keeper ‘n Me, published in 1994, won the Alberta Writers Guild’s Best Novel Award. He has twice won the Native American Press Association Award for his journalism, and he received the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature for his 2011 memoir One Story, One Song. He was also awarded the Canadian Authors Association Award for fiction in 2007 for his third novel, Dream Wheels. Most recently, Richard was honoured with the 2012 Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media and Communications.
Richard is well known as a storyteller and a teacher, both in British Columbia, where he now lives with his wife and their dog, and across the country. In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, in recognition of his lifetime of achievement in writing and publishing, and in 2011 he was the Harvey Stevenson Southam Guest Lecturer in journalism at the University of Victoria.
We invite everyone to come out to listen to Richard Wagamese speak. It is free to the public at both locations.
Ann Belcham