Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play and nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award when first published in 1988, The Rez Sisters has gone on to become an internationally critically acclaimed play, included in all major anthologies of Canadian literature world-wide. Now, in celebration of its twentieth anniversary, the play is being published in its original language: Cree. Included is a Note on Dialect" by the author. The play tells the story of seven reserve women who decide to go to the "Biggest Bingo in the World," in Toronto, a night's drive from their Manitoulin Island home. Of the many works that Tomson Highway has written to date, his best known are the plays The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Rose, and Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout. He is also the author of the best-selling novel The Fur Queen. For many years, he ran Canada's premiere Native Theatre Company, Native Earth Performing Arts, in Toronto, out of which has emerged a generation of professional Native Theatre artists. He divides his time equally between a cottage on northern Ontario and an apartment in the south of France."

Tomson Highway was born near Maria Lake, Manitoba in 1951. His father, Joe, was a hunter, fisherman and sled-dog racer, and his family lived a nomadic lifestyle. With no access to books, television or radio, Highway’s parents would tell their children stories; thus began Highway’s life-long interest in the oral tradition of storytelling. When he was six, Highway was taken from his family and placed in residential school in The Pas; he subsequently went to high school in Winnipeg and then travelled to London to study at the University of Western Ontario, earning a music degree in 1975 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976. Instead of becoming a professional concert musician as he had at one point contemplated, however, Highway decided instead to dedicate his life to the service of his people. Fluent in Cree, English and French, he was for six years the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, the first and most enduring Native professional company in Canada which he also helped found. From 1975 to 1978 Highway worked as a cultural worker for the Native Peoples’ Resource Centre. He has worked for the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture and also for the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres as a program analyst. From 1983 to 1985 he worked as a freelance theatre artist before becoming the artistic director of the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Company in 1986. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, and Concordia University. Tomson Highway is widely recognized for his tremendous contribution to the development of Aboriginal theatre in both Canada and around the world. In 1994, he was inducted into the Order of Canada, the first Aboriginal writer to be so honoured.

Tomson Highway's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award
• Winner, Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award
• Winner, Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play