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| Born | 1956 (age 66–67) Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
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Cheryl Dawn Foggo AOE is a Canadian author, documentary film director, screenwriter and playwright.
Cheryl Foggo | |
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| Born | 1956 (age 66–67) Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
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| Language | English |
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| www | |
Cheryl Dawn Foggo AOE is a Canadian author, documentary film director, screenwriter and playwright.
Born in Calgary, Alberta in 1956, [1] [2] she is descended from Black Oklahomans who settled in Maidstone, Saskatchewan in 1910. [3] She also had ancestors who lived in Amber Valley, Alberta and Campsie, Alberta. Foggo knew CTrain designer Oliver Bowen when she was growing up in Calgary and her mother's bridesmaid and close friend was Violet King Henry, the first Black woman lawyer in Canada. [4] [5]
A keen researcher and voice for Black pioneers in Western Canada, Foggo recently served on the advisory board for Black on the Prairies, a multi-platform archive and resource initiated and curated by journalist Omayra Issa and CBC Radio host Ify Chiwetelu on CBC and has also had multiple presentations of her multi-media creations: Ranchers, Rebels and the Righteous, Creole, Travelling On, Five Voices and Unlocking Sacred Codes. [6] She began work on the play John Ware Re-Imagined , [4] hoping to bring attention to the Black Albertan cowboy and rancher John Ware in time for the centennial of the Calgary Stampede in 2012. [7] [8]
She has been profiled in Who's Who in Black Canada . [6]
She volunteers on multiple boards as an advocate for writers and Black artists and is an active mentor and lecturer.
Foggo has written for Theatre Alberta, Reader's Digest.ca, Avenue, AlbertaViews , Alberta Ventures, Calgary, Canadian,Western Living, Sunday Magazine, Arts Bridge, Muse, Canadian Consumer, the Calgary Herald , The Globe and Mail and Legacy. [6]
Her work has been anthologized in multiple collections, including The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology edited by Karina Vernon, Calgary Through The Eyes of Writers edited by Shaun Hunter, Alberta Encore, One Step Over The Line, Directions-The Bicentenary of the Abolition of the British Slave Trade, Remembering Chinook Country and Unsettled Pasts.
Her short play The Sender was commissioned as part of Obsidian Theatre Company's 21 Black Futures, now streaming on CBC Television Gem.
Her play Heaven is scheduled for production at the Citadel Theatre in summer 2021.
In August 2014, her play John Ware Reimagined premiered in Calgary, [9] produced by Ellipsis Tree Collective Theatre Company. John Ware Reimagined had its second production at Workshop West Theatre Company in 2017. An early version of the play had its first public reading in 2012. [6] The script won the Writers' Guild of Alberta 2015 Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. [6]
In August 2012, The Devil We Know, her play co-written with Clem Martini, premiered at the Blyth Festival. [6]
In 2010, she created a stage adaptation of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart , receiving workshops and staged readings during Theatre Calgary's Fuse Festival and Afrikadey. [6]
Heaven was first produced by Lunchbox Theatre Company in 2001 and aired on CBC Radio Sunday Showcase and Monday Night Playhouse in 2004.
Her play Turnaround, co-written with Clem Martini, was produced by Lunchbox Theatre and Quest Theatre Company in 1999.
Her first book Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West is a memoir about five generations of her family and talks about growing up Black on the Canadian prairies. It was a finalist for the Alberta Culture Non-fiction Award in 1990. [1] In 2020, Brush Education released the 30th anniversary edition. [10] The audio version of the 30th anniversary edition is read by acclaimed actor Karen Robinson.
Her three children's/YA books - One Thing That's True (1998), I Have Been in Danger (2001), Dear Baobab, (2011) [3] - offer positive representations of Black and mixed-race childhoods. [1]
Foggo made John Ware Reclaimed, a documentary film about legendary Black cowboy John Ware with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). [9] [11] John Ware Reclaimed had its world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2020, where it received the CTV Alberta Feature Audience Choice Award. [12]
In 2019 she wrote and directed the short film Kicking Up A Fuss: The Charles Daniels Story, which was a finalist for an AMPIA in 2020.
In 2002, she wrote and directed the NFB documentary film The Journey of Lesra Martin . [3]
She has been a consultant on several other films and was a member of the story team on the CBC drama North of 60 for 2.5 seasons.
| Years | Title | Role | Ref. |
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| 1992 | Carol's Mirror | Screenwriter | [3] |
| 1997-1998 | North of Sixty TV series | Screenwriter | [3] |
| 2002 | The Journey of Lesra Martin | Screenwriter | [3] |
| 2019 | Kicking Up A Fuss: The Charles Daniels Story | Screenwriter | |
| 2020 | John Ware Reclaimed | Screenwriter | [12] |
Myrna Kostash is a Canadian writer and journalist. She has published several non-fiction books and written for many Canadian magazines including Chatelaine. Of Ukrainian descent, she was born in Edmonton, Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta.
Aritha van Herk,, is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.
The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October.
Lesra Martin is an American-Canadian lawyer, motivational speaker and writer. He is perhaps best known for helping to bring about the release of former boxer Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter.
John Ware was a Canadian cowboy who was influential in the early years of the burgeoning ranching industry in Southern Alberta. Remembered for his excellent horsemanship, he was among the first ranchers in Alberta, arriving in 1882 on a cattle drive from the United States and settling to ranch until his death in 1905.
Michelle Latimer is a Canadian actress, director, writer, and filmmaker. She initially rose to prominence for her role as Trish Simkin on the television series Paradise Falls, shown nationally in Canada on Showcase Television (2001–2004). Since the early 2010s, she has directed several documentaries, including her feature film directorial debut, Alias (2013), and the Viceland series, Rise, which focuses on the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests; the latter won a Canadian Screen Award at the 6th annual ceremony in 2018.
Amber Valley is an unincorporated community in northern Alberta, Canada, approximately 160 kilometres (99 mi) north of Edmonton. Its elevation is 608 m (1,995 ft). Originally named Pine Creek, Amber Valley was among several Alberta communities settled in the early 20th century by early Black immigrants to the province from Oklahoma and the Deep South of the United States. About 1,000 African Americans emigrated to Alberta from 1909-1911. Amber Valley is the location of the Obadiah Place provincial heritage site, a homestead of one of the first African-American settler families.
Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian creator and producer for film and television, a published author, public speaker, journalist, and former broadcaster.
Cheryl Bernard is a Canadian curler from Calgary, Alberta. She represented Team Canada at the 2010 Winter Olympics as the team's skip, winning the silver medal in women's curling after falling to Sweden in the final. Her first major tournament win came at the 2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials in Edmonton, Alberta.
Sugith Varughese is an Indian-born Canadian writer, director and actor.
Shelley Alice Thompson is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her character Barbara Lahey on the hit mockumentary program Trailer Park Boys.
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.
Naomi K. Lewis is a Canadian fiction and nonfiction writer who resides in Calgary, Alberta. She was a finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction.
David Christensen is an Alberta film director and producer who since October 2007 has been an executive producer with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) at its Northwest Centre, based in Edmonton.
Addena Sumter-Freitag is a Canadian author, poet, performer and speaker. She grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Violet Pauline King Henry was the first Black woman lawyer in Canada, the first Black person to graduate law in Alberta and the first Black person to be admitted to the Alberta Bar. She was also the first woman named to a senior management position with the American national YMCA.
Oliver Bowen was a Canadian engineer who managed the design and construction of the first line of Calgary's light rail transit system: the CTrain. The City of Calgary acknowledged his engineering work by naming a light rail transit (LRT) maintenance facility in his honour.
John Ware Reclaimed is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Cheryl Foggo and released in 2020. The film profiles John Ware, an African American man who moved to Alberta in the 1880s and became one of the province's first significant ranchers.
Jasmine Road is a Canadian drama film, directed by Warren Sulatycky and released in 2020. The film stars Greg Ellwand as Mac Bagley, a rancher in rural southern Alberta who has been emotionally closed off since the death of his wife; after his schoolteacher daughter Loretta learns that her student Heba, a Syrian refugee who came to Canada with her mother Layla and uncle Salem, needs to find a new place to live, she invites the family to stay at the ranch, with Mac's initial resistance to the idea giving way to acceptance and a new lease on life as he gets to know them.
Francheska: Prairie Queen is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Laura O'Grady and slated for release in 2022. The film is a portrait of Francis Yutrago, a gay immigrant to Canada from the Philippines who performs as a drag queen under the name Francheska Dynamites in Lethbridge, Alberta.
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