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Foggo Cheryl
Cheryl Foggo is a writer, story editor and filmmaker whose first film for the NFB is The Journey of Lesra Martin.
Lesra Martin was an illiterate, probably doomed kid from the Brooklyn ghetto when he heard about imprisoned boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Lesra galvanized a group of Canadians to save Rubin.
Foggo has also worked on the television series North of 60 where she penned episode 82, ''Love Hurts'' which was nominated for an Alberta Motion Picture Industry Award in 1998.
She was born in Calgary and continues to work in her hometown today as a writer of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, plays and magazine articles.
Her lifelong passion for her ancestors' story compelled her in 1985 to begin researching and writing Pourin' Down Rain, her first book, which chronicles her forbears' journey from Africa to America to northwestern Canada. It was a finalist for the 1990 Alberta Culture Non-fiction Awards.
Her first young adult novel, One Thing That's True, has received many award nominations and garnered her the only Alberta nomination of the 1997 Governor General's Award for Canadian Literature and the Mr. Christie Book Award. She garnered a Betty Mitchell Award nomination for Outstanding New Play for Turnaround, a play she co-wrote with her husband, which was produced by Lunchbox and Quest Theatres in 1999-2000.
Her children's book, I Have Been in Danger has been published by Coteau Books. Heaven was a finalist in Theatre British Columbia's National Playwriting Competition 2000. Foggo is working with Obsidian Theatre in Toronto on a full-length version of the play to be produced in their 2003/2004 season. She is married to playwright Clem Martini, with whom she has collaborated on films, plays and the raising of their two daughters.
