Lawrence Hill (born 1957)
Lawrence Hill is an award-wining Canadian novelist, essayist, journalist, memoirist and educator. He was born in Newmarket, Ontario, and grew up in nearby Don Mills, a mostly white community. Hill’s father was African American and his mother was white. After marrying in 1953, the couple left the United States and immigrated to Canada. As Canadians, they each made
significant contributions to advancing human rights in Canada. These factors deeply influence Hill’s writing. Hill earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Université Laval and a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University. In 2005, Hill won his first literary prize, a National Magazine Award for the article “Is Africa’s Pain Black America’s Burden?” To date, Hill has written 11 books, including, the novels “Beatrice and Croc Harry,” “The Book of Negroes” and “The Illegal,” and the memoir “Black Berry Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.” Hill won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres. Working with director Clement Virgo, Hill co-wrote the screenplay based on “The Book of Negroes,” which was adapted for television as a six-part miniseries. It premiered in Cannes, Toronto, and Manhattan in the fall of 2014, and aired on CBC Television in Canada and on BET in the USA. A Member of the Order of Canada, Hill is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph.
(Sources: The Canadian Encyclopedia and Lawrencehill.com)
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