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  • $19.95

    ISBN: 9781772012187 | Paperback

    160 pages | Pub. Date: 20181005
    5.5 W × 8.5 H × .75 D inches
    Backlist | Drama | Bisac: DRA013000
    Rights: WORLD

    Or find Thanks for Giving in your local bookstore

Nan’s family is home for Thanksgiving, but some unsolicited truths are about to be dropped at the dinner table. Old wounds and new realities collide, and sibling rivalry is stoked, but the enduring spirit that guides this family charges on, ever fierce. Thanks for Giving offers plenty to chew on. This intimate and restorative new play from Governor General’s Literary Award winner Kevin Loring, the first ever Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada, is about legacy – the legacy of our personal and collective histories, and a family’s legacy as it moves into an age where the assumptions of the old ways surrender to new possibilities. But if the play’s main course is legacy, the dessert is pumpkin pie. Tuck in!

Cast of 5 women and 3 men.

Finalist 2019 Governor General's Award for Drama

"Thanks for Giving ... explores the colonizing of Indigenous people by European settlers and the consequences for the colonized and colonizer through the strained relations within a family.”
University of Toronto Quarterly

"Loring has a lot to say – about colonialism, reconciliation, residential schools, intergenerational trauma and its contemporary effects, but also about the rich, matriarchal First Nations culture, Indigenous respect for the land, the need for new perspectives on history.”
Globe and Mail

By Kevin Loring

Kevin Loring is a member of the Nlaka’pamux First Nation in Lytton, BC. His most recent play, Thanks for Giving, was a finalist for the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. His first play Where the Blood Mixes, won the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script; the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright; and the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.

Read more about Kevin Loring


news | 2021-06-22
Kevin Loring’s most recent play is hot off the press!

…by Talonbooks: Where the Blood Mixes (2009) and Thanks for Giving (2018). …


news | 2019-10-24
Governor General's Literary Award Nominees now 30% Off!

…1 Hour Photo , Kevin Loring’s Thanks for Giving , and Simon Brousseau’s (translated by …


news | 2019-10-02
Governor General's Literary Award Nominations!

…1 Hour Photo , Kevin Loring’s Thanks for Giving , and Simon Brousseau’s (translated by … General’s Literary Awards. 1 Hour Photo and Thanks for Giving have been nominated in Drama, and Synapses has …


news | 2019-06-20
Celebrating National Indigenous Peoples Day

…to share with you today. Kevin Loring’s Thanks for Giving , Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers and …


news | 2018-11-05
Fall Drama Has Arrived: 1 Hour Photo and Thanks for Giving!

…with the most vivid colours of our times. Thanks for Giving , from Governor General’s Literary Award winner … to new possibilities. Pick up your copies of Thanks for Giving and 1 Hour Photo today! …


news | 2018-06-21
Happy National Indigenous Peoples Day!

…in Canada, 1980–2010 (second printing!), and Thanks for Giving , out soon, include Indigenous authors, and …