High School

By Sara Quin & Tegan Quin

Before they became celebrated musicians and international LGBTQ icons, twin sisters Sara and Tegan Quin grew up during the peak of grunge and rave culture in the 1990s in Calgary, Alberta. They skipped school, dropped acid, snuck out of the house, and fell in and out of love - sometimes with their best friends. They fought over their landline telephone, hung out in a pack at the mall, got facial piercings. They worshipped Ani DiFranco and Courtney Love, and listened obsessively to Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Green Day.

Then one day they found their stepdad's guitar, and their lives changed forever.

A chronicle of their history in interwoven chapters, High School unveils two revelatory coming-of-age stories. It captures the discordant and parallel memories of two sisters wrestling with their sexual identities, beginning to see themselves as artists, and struggling to understand what they want to make of their lives. Their story relates the universal trials of being a teenager, and the exhilaration of a time of life when all seems wondrously, enticingly possible.