Canada honours Richard

OTTAWA – Anishinabek News columnist Richard Wagamese is a recipient of the 2013 Canada Council Molson Prize in the arts.

Wagamese, Ojibway from the Wabseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, was the 2012 recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in Media & Communications. A professional writer for 34 years, he is the author of 13 books of fiction, memoir and poetry, and in 1990 became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award as a columnist for the Calgary Herald.

The prize is worth $50,000 to Wagamese, who lives in the mountains outside of Kamloops, B.C. with his wife Debra Powell and Molly the Story Dog. His new novel Medicine Walk arrives in 2014 from McClelland & Stewart.