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Tomson Highway, CM (born December 6, 1951) is a Cree playwright, novelist, and children's author from Brochet, Manitoba. He is the celebrated author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won him the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award. The Rez Sisters became a smash hit across Canada and went on to the Edinburgh International Festival in 1988.

Highway has also published a novel, Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), which is based on the events that led to his brother René Highway’s death of AIDS.

He is the uncle of actor/playwight Billy Merasty. He was artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. He obtained his B.A. in Music in 1975 and his B.A. in English in 1977, both from the University of Western Ontario. Highway holds three honarary degrees and in 1994 became a member of the Order of Canada.

In 2000, Maclean's named him one of the 100 most important people in Canadian history. Cree is his first language.

Plays

Novels

  • Kiss of the Fur Queen - 1998 (shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Canadian Booksellers' Association Fiction Book of the Year Award)

Children's books

  • Caribou Song - 2001 (selected as one of the "Top 10 Children’s Books" by Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail)
  • Dragonfly Kites - 2002

See also

1951 births | Living people | Canadian children's writers | Canadian dramatists and playwrights | Canadian novelists | First Nations writers | Gay writers | LGBT writers from Canada | Members of the Order of Canada | People from Manitoba | University of Western Ontario alumni | Cree people

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Tomson Highway".

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