Richard Wagamese

An Ojibway from the Wabasseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, Richard Wagamese received the George Ryga Prize for Social Awareness in 2011 for One Story, One Song. He has also won a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing for the Calgary Herald in 1990 and the 2007 Canadian Authors Association MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction for his novel Dream Wheels. In 2012 he was chosen as a recipient of a National Aboriginal Achievement Award (NAAA) as a representative of media and communications. In 2013 he became the first recipient of the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature First Prize for Indian Horse, which also won the  Canada Reads 2013 People’s Choice award.

In Medicine Walk (2014) we meet 16-year-old Franklin Starlight as he saddles up to ride into town, feeling compelled to rescue his dissolute father, Eldon, someone he doesn’t even know very well. Eldon is a drunk, dying of liver cancer in a flophouse. Frank dutifully accedes to his father’s request to be taken into the mountains, into the woods, so he can be buried in a traditional Ojibway way. As they ride into the backcountry, Eldon’s past comes to light: his poverty-stricken childhood, serving in the Korean War. Frank finally gets to know the father he seldom had.

Richard Wagamese lives near Kamloops.

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