Gwen Pharis Ringwood was the first Canadian playwright to make a prolonged effort to translate the lives of western Canadians into dramatic form. Her best-known plays, Still Stands the House and Dark Harvest, develop techniques to dramatize conflict between man and environment, a theme long used by Canadian novelists and poets but one which had for the most part eluded the dramatists.

Ringwood was born Gwendolyn Margaret Pharis in Anatone, Washington, to Leslie Pharis, a schoolteacher and farmer, and his wife, Mary Bowersock Pharis, also a teacher. The Pharis family moved to Alberta to farm in 1913 and crossed the international boundary again to try cattle ranching near Valier, Montana, in 1926. Gwen Pharis entered the University of Montana in 1927, but when the family moved back to Canada in 1929, she transferred to the University of Alberta, graduating in 1934.

While at university Ringwood became involved in theater through working as a...