Documentation:CNIEConference/Keynotes

Audrey Watters

have .jpg picture

Audrey Watters is a writer who's worked in the education field for the past 15 years: as a graduate student, college instructor, and program manager for an ed-tech non-profit. Although two chapters into her Comparative Literature dissertation, Audrey decided to abandon academia, and she now happily fulfills the one job recommended by a junior high aptitude test: freelance writer. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Edutopia, MindShift, Fast Company, Inside Higher Ed, The School Library Journal, O'Reilly Radar, ReadWriteWeb, Campus Technology, and The Huffington Post, in addition to her own blog Hack Education. She is currently working on a book called Teaching Machines, due out in 2014.

Richard Wagamese

have .jpg picture

Richard Wagamese is one of Canada's foremost Native authors and storytellers. Working as a professional writer since 1979 he's been a newspaper columnist and reporter, radio and television broadcaster and producer, documentary producer and the author of twelve titles from major Canadian publishers.

The 57 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 won the inaugural Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature for Indian Horse in 2013, the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature for his 2011 memoir One Story, One Song, 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.

Richard was the 2012 recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media & Communications.

In 2014 he will publish two novels; Him Standing, for Orca Press and his new literary novel, Medicine Walk, with McClelland & Stewart. Currently, his series One Native Life runs as a radio commentary and newspaper column in both Canada and the U.S.

He was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in June 2010 and was the 2011 Harvey Stevenson Southam Guest Lecturer in Writing at the University of Victoria. Richard is also the recipient of the 2013 Molson Prize for the Arts.