• Age: 11 to 18
• Grade: 6 to 12

Playwright Dennis Foon spoke widely with teens who gamble. "They told me wild, wonderful adrenaline-pumping tales of their highs," he says. "The lows were another story, not crumpling quietly into themselves, but a toxic bomb scarring the people closest to them." Today's young people grow up in an era of expanding and available gambling opportunities and face tough choices earlier generations did not. The characters in Chasing the Money, as a result of their own or others' gambling problems, are the people—youth and adult—seen every day by addiction counsellors.

Dennis Foon was co-founder of Vancouverâ??s acclaimed Green Thumb Theatre and served as artistic director for twelve years. As a playwright, his body of plays continues to be produced internationally in numerous languages and he has received the British Theatre AWard, two Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, the Jesse Richardson Career Achievement Award, and the International Arts for Young Audiences Award. In 2007 he was made a lifetime member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada for his â??outstanding contribution to Canadian Playwriting and Theatre.â? His play Kindness received the 2009 AATE Distinguished Play Award. His newest play, Scar Tissue, premiered at the Arts Club Theatre.

Heâ??s won a Gemini, two WGC Awards, three Leos, and a Robert W. Wagner Award for his screenplays, which include Little Criminals, White Lies, Torso, and Terry. He is also the co-writer of Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity and A Shine of Rainbows, which won a Leo and received a Genie Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He wrote the screenplay for the feature Life Above All, Prix FranÒ«ois Chalais winner at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, 2011 Academy Award Shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film, and a Leo winner for Best Screenplay. His novel Skud (Groundwood Books, 2003) received a BC Book Prize, and his sci-fi/fantasy trilogy, The Longlight Legacy, has been published in five languages.

Dennis Foon's profile page