Night Wanderer, The

Drew Hayden Taylor is from Curve Lake, Ontario

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Drew Hayden Taylor has written, directed, or worked on approximately 17 film and video documentaries about Native issues. As one of Canada's first Native scriptwriters, he has story-edited numerous writing workshops for visible minority writers.

Drew's leading passion for many years has been the theater world, thanks to a stint as Playwright-in-Residence for Native Earth Performing Arts in the late 1980s. From 1994 to 1997, Drew proudly served as Native Earth's Artistic Director.

In the last 15 years, over 60 professional productions of his plays have been staged, including Toronto at Dreamer's Rock/Education is Our Right (winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award for Best Play for Young Audiences), The Bootlegger Blues (winner of the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Best Drama), and its sequels, The Baby Blues, which won first prize at the University of Alaska Anchorage Native Playwrighting Contest, and The Buz'Gem Blues.

He has also been dabbling in the world of prose, writing short stories for various anthologies and writing a satirical column. A collection of his best pieces was published in a book titled Funny, You Don't Look Like One: Observations of a Blue-Eyed Ojibway and its three successful sequels. He also co-edited an anthology titled Voices: Being Native in Canada.

More recently, Drew has been directing documentaries, most notably Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Stew, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The Night Wanderer (2007), Drew's book with Annick Press, was inspired by this documentary. 

Drew was always interested in being a writer, although he did not consider himself one until his mid-20s. Finding mentors was difficult because there were few Native writers around at the time.  

Drew's advice for aspiring authors is to read anything and everything. The more you read, the better writer you'll be. His own inspiration comes from anyone with a story to tell.

Drew is currently working on two movie scripts, several new plays, and a revolutionary new rocket fuel when he is not traveling the world (in reality or his imagination). He also enjoys movies and cooking (perhaps the thing his mother is most proud of is his ability to make spaghetti sauce from scratch!).

He lives on his reserve in Curve Lake, Ontario, where he grew up.

Watch this book trailer created by Annick Press.