Richard Wagamese has been a success in every genre of writing he has tried. The 54 year-old Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing in 1991.

As a published author he was won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction for his third novel Dream Wheels, in 2007 and the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award for his debut novel, Keeper'n Me in 1994.

He published an anthology of his newspaper columns, The Terrible Summer in 1996 from Warwick Press and his second novel, A Quality of Light, in 1997 from Doubleday. A memoir entitled For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son arrived in October 2002, Dream Wheels in 2007, and the novel Ragged Company and his acclaimed memoir One Native Life in 2008.

He has twice won the Native American Press Association Award and the National Aboriginal Communications Society Award for his newspaper columns. Currently, his series One Native Life runs as a radio commentary and newspaper column in both Canada and the U.S. and as a weekly television commentary on CFJC-TV 7 in Kamloops, BC.

Richard continues to appear as a keynote speaker at conferences and leads writing and storytelling workshops entitled From the Oral Tradition to the Printed Page in communities across the country.