Lawrence Hill | |
---|---|
Born | Newmarket, Ontario | January 24, 1957
Occupation | Novelist, non-fiction writer |
Nationality | Canadian, American |
Alma mater | Universite Laval (BA) Johns Hopkins University (MA) |
Period | 1990s–present |
Notable works | Black Berry, Sweet Juice, The Book of Negroes |
Lawrence Hill (born January 24, 1957) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. [1] He is known for his 2007 novel The Book of Negroes , inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the American Revolutionary War, and his 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. [2] The Book of Negroes was adapted for a TV mini-series produced in 2015. He was selected in 2013 for the Massey Lectures: he drew from his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life, published that year. His ten books include other non-fiction and fictional works, and some have been translated into other languages and published in numerous other countries.
Hill was born in Newmarket, Ontario, to an American couple who had immigrated to Toronto from Washington, D.C., in 1953. His father was black and his mother was white. [3] Hill served as chair of the jury for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. [4]
Hill was born in 1957 in Newmarket, Ontario, the second son of Daniel G. and Donna Mae (Bender) Hill, an interracial American couple who had married in 1953 and settled in Toronto, where his father was completing his doctorate in sociology at the University of Toronto. [5] His father, a sociologist, civil servant and activist, later became the first director and chairperson of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. [6] Daniel Hill also served as the Ombudsman of Ontario. He published a still seminal work about Black history in Canada: The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada. [6]
Hill's mother, Donna Mae Bender, came from a white Republican family in Oak Park, Illinois, and graduated from Oberlin College. She met his father in Washington, D.C., where she worked for a Democratic US Senator and became a civil rights activist. [7] [8] In the early 1950s in Toronto, Donna Hill worked as a human rights activist for the city's Labor Committee for Human Rights. She lobbied the Ontario government to enact anti-discrimination legislation. [7] She also wrote about Black Canadian history; her A Black Man's Toronto, 1914-1980: The Reminiscences of Harry Gairey (1980) was published by the Multicultural History Society of Ontario. [7]
Daniel and Donna Hill co-founded The Ontario Black History Society with Wilson O. Brooks and other friends. [9] Lawrence Hill was born as the second son, and grew up with his brother Dan and sister Karen in the predominantly white Toronto suburb of Don Mills. Dan Hill became a singer-songwriter and writer, [6] and their sister, the late Karen Hill (1958-2014), was also a writer. Her novel, short stories, poems and an essay are still to be published. [10]
Hill's paternal grandfather and great grandfather were university-educated, ordained ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. [11] It was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1816 as the first independent black denomination in the United States.
After attending the University of Toronto Schools, Hill earned a B.A in economics from Laval University in Quebec City. He moved temporarily to the United States to earn an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. [12]
Lawrence Hill presently lives with his second wife, the writer Miranda Hill, in Hamilton, Ontario, and in Woody Point, Newfoundland. He has four daughters and a son. He has lived and worked in Baltimore, Maryland; Spain, and France. [13]
Hill taught undergraduate fiction writing while completing his M.A. at Johns Hopkins. [14] Since completing that program, he returned to Canada, where he has taught creative writing or mentored creative writers in numerous adult education programs. [15] These have included The Becoming Ground program at the University of British Columbia, the Humber School for Writers, Sage Hill Writing Experience, and The Banff Centre. [16]
Hill has also served numerous times on juries granting literary awards or writing grants. He has frequently spoken at academic and social conferences, literary festivals, libraries, universities and high schools across Canada, [17] the United States, [18] Mexico, [19] Europe, South America, South Africa, the Caribbean and Australia. [20]
He is a Senior Fellow at Massey College at the University of Toronto. [11] [21] As of September 2016, Hill is affiliated with the University of Guelph. [13]
Hill's first passion was running, but he was unable to realize his dreams of becoming an elite athlete and winning an Olympic gold medal in the 5,000 meters. [13] He threw himself into writing in his teenage years and completed his first story at the early age of 14. [13] After receiving his B.A. in economics at Laval University, Hill worked for four years as a full-time newspaper reporter for The Globe and Mail , and later for The Winnipeg Free Press . [3] [22]
He became the parliamentary bureau chief for the newspaper in Ottawa, covering Parliament, the Supreme Court of Canada and a wide range of cultural, economic and social issues. [22] Resigning from his position as parliamentary bureau chief in 1986, Hill moved to Spain to begin writing fiction full-time. [13]
The work of his parents in the human rights movement and Black history greatly influenced Hill's work related to identity and belonging as a writer. Hill curated and wrote the exhibit on his father for the Ontario Archives, called The Freedom Seeker: The Life and Times of Daniel G. Hill. [7]
Hill's nonfiction books include Trials and Triumphs: The Story of African-Canadians (1993), Women of Vision: The Story of the Canadian Negro Women's Association (1996), his memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (2001), The Deserter's Tale: The Story of An Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (2007), Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book: An Anatomy of a Book Burning (2013), and Blood: The Stuff of Life (2013).
Hill's fictional works include Some Great Thing (1992), Any Known Blood (1997), The Book of Negroes (2007), and The Illegal (2015), which brought his work to broad public attention and won numerous awards. [12]
Published in at least ten countries, The Book of Negroes won several awards, including the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, both CBC Radio's Canada Reads and Radio-Canada's Le Combat des livres , and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. [11] The novel has been chosen by community or academic reading programs as a central work for discussion at Dalhousie University (twice), [23] Trent University, the Calgary Public Library, [24] The City of Rothesay (NB), [25] the Hamilton Public Library [26] and the One Book One Community program linking Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, Ontario. [27]
The Book of Negroes was adapted as a six-part television miniseries. Hill co-wrote it with director Clement Virgo. The series featured actors Aunjanue Ellis, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Louis Gossett Jr. [28] Filmed in South Africa, Nova Scotia, and Ontario in early 2014, the miniseries premiered in Cannes, Toronto and New York City in the fall of 2014, began to air on CBC Television in Canada in January 2015, and was scheduled to air on BET in the US in February 2015. [29] [30] [31] [32]
Although Hill's novel The Book of Negroes was first released in 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company under the title Someone Knows My Name; [33] the American publisher re-issued a new edition of the novel with the original title in January 2015 to build on the mini-series. BET has committed to releasing the TV miniseries in the US as The Book of Negroes . [34] HarperCollins Australia published this novel as Someone Knows My Name in Australia and New Zealand.
Hill's short fiction has been featured in the literary quarterlies Descant and Exile, as well as in Canadian newspapers and magazines such as The Toronto Star and Toronto Life . [13] The Walrus published Hill's award-winning essay "Is Africa's Pain Black America's Burden", [35] and a short story entitled "Meet You at the Door". [36] Its January–February 2015 issue featured Hill's essay on the creative process of adapting The Book of Negroes for the TV mini-series. [37]
Hill served as a writer in residence with the Toronto District School Board from 2011 to 2013, visiting some twenty schools to discuss the art and business of writing with students. [38]
Hill was selected in 2013 as CBC Massey Lecturer. In the fall of that year he delivered lectures in five Canadian cities, drawn from his non-fiction book Blood: the Stuff of Life (2013). [39] Also aired on CBC Radio, Blood: The Stuff of Life is a personal consideration of the physical, social, cultural and psychological aspects of blood, how it defines, unites and divides us. [40] In 2015, Blood: The Stuff of Life won the Hamilton Literary Award for Non Fiction. [41]
He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015. [42]
His newest novel, The Illegal , was published in fall 2015. [43] The novel has already been optioned for film treatment by Conquering Lion Pictures, the producers of the Book of Negroes miniseries. [44] The Illegal won the 2016 edition of Canada Reads, making Hill the first writer ever to win the competition twice. [45]
French translations have been published by Les Éditions de la Pleine Lune in Montreal, Quebec. [46]
Aminata became a bestseller in Quebec, where it won Le combat des livres on Radio-Canada. It was also published by Présence Africaine in Paris, France, where it was shortlisted, in 2013, for the Prix Fetkann. [47]
The Book of Negroes has been published in translation in Dutch, Norwegian, German and Hebrew.
Deeply passionate about the advancement of women and girls in Africa, Hill has worked as a volunteer in the West African countries of Niger, Cameroon and Mali since 1979. [48] His first published work of fiction, a short story entitled "My Side of the Fence," recounted the transformative experience of working in Niger with Crossroads International. [49] As an honorary patron of Crossroads, in 2010 Hill founded the Aminata Fund, supporting programs for women and girls in developing areas of Africa. [48] He returned in 2014 as a Crossroads volunteer in Swaziland. [50]
In 2007, Hill collaborated with Joshua Key, a former US-Army private, to write Key's memoir of serving with the US Army in the Iraq War in 2004. Key deserted the army and sought refugee status in Canada in 2005. The Deserter's Tale: the Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq was published by House of Anansi Press in Canada. [51] the United States (Grove Atlantic) [52] It has been translated and published in more than ten other languages or countries. [53] [54]
Hill has been on the advisory council of Book Clubs for Inmates since 2010. [55] He has also been a member of the Council of Patrons of the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, since 2011. [56] Hill is an honorary patron of Project Bookmark Canada since 2012. [57] He is a member of PEN Canada and an active member of the Writers' Union of Canada, for which he has chaired and sat on various committees and served on the National Council. [58]
Canadian literature is written in several languages including English, French, and to some degree various Indigenous languages. It is often divided into French- and English-language literatures, which are rooted in the literary traditions of France and Britain, respectively. The earliest Canadian narratives were of travel and exploration.
David Lorge Parnas is a Canadian early pioneer of software engineering, who developed the concept of information hiding in modular programming, which is an important element of object-oriented programming today. He is also noted for his advocacy of precise documentation.
Jay Ingram CM is a Canadian author, broadcaster and science communicator. He was host of the television show Daily Planet, which aired on Discovery Channel Canada, since the channel's inception in 1995. Ingram's last episode of Daily Planet aired on June 5, 2011. Ingram announced his retirement but stated he will make guest appearances on Daily Planet. He was succeeded by Dan Riskin. His book The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer's is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in 2015.
Daniel Grafton Hill III was an American-Canadian sociologist, civil servant, human rights specialist, and Black Canadian historian.
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. He is best known for writing about First Nations culture. Three Day Road, a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, was inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Joseph Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce, follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Three Day Road. The third novel in the Bird family trilogy was published in 2013 as The Orenda.
Tudor Olimpius Bompa is a sports scientist. He is a Professor Emeritus at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is married to Tamara Bompa, who is an associate lecturer at York University.
Clement Virgo is a Canadian film and television writer, producer and director who runs the production company, Conquering Lion Pictures, with producer Damon D'Oliveira. Virgo is best known for co-writing and directing an adaptation of the novel by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes (2015), a six-part miniseries that aired on CBC Television in Canada and BET in the United States.
Colin Robert Johnson is the former Anglican archbishop of Toronto and Moosonee, and he served as Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario from 2009 to 2018. He was the 11th Bishop of Toronto, the largest diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Lyriq Bent is a Jamaican-Canadian actor. He is known for his roles in the Saw films, the television series Rookie Blue, and The Book of Negroes. Bent portrays Jamie Overstreet in the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, based on the film of the same name.
The Book of Negroes is a document created by Brigadier General Samuel Birch, under the direction of Sir Guy Carleton, that records names and descriptions of 3,000 Black Loyalists, enslaved Africans who escaped to the British lines during the American Revolution and were evacuated to points in Nova Scotia as free people of colour.
William Arthur Stewart Buxton is a Canadian computer scientist and designer. He is regarded as one of the pioneers in the field of human–computer interaction and is currently active in research at the University of Toronto. He is especially known for his curation of his collection documenting the history of interactive devices. He was a partner researcher at Microsoft Research before leaving in December 2022.
The Book of Negroes is a 2007 novel from Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. In the United States, Australia and New Zealand, the novel was published under the title Someone Knows My Name.
Brian Francis is a Canadian writer best known for his 2004 debut novel Fruit.
Paul Yee is a Chinese-Canadian historian and writer. He is the author of many books for children, including Teach Me to Fly, Skyfighter, The Curses of Third Uncle, Dead Man's Gold, and Ghost Train—winner of the 1996 Governor General's Award for English language children's literature. In 2012, the Writers' Trust of Canada awarded Paul Yee the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People in recognition of having "contributed uniquely and powerfully to our literary landscape over a writing career that spans almost 30 years".
Conquering Lion Pictures (CLP) is an independent Canadian film production company founded by Clement Virgo and Damon D'Oliveira. Virgo and D'Oliveira met in 1991 while studying at the Canadian Film Centre (CFC), and formed CLP while working on Rude, their first feature film at the CFC.
The Book of Negroes is a 2015 Canadian historical drama television miniseries directed by Clement Virgo, adapted by Virgo and Lawrence Hill from the latter’s 2007 novel of the same name. It stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Lyriq Bent, Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., Ben Chaplin, Allan Hawco, Greg Bryk, and Jane Alexander. It originally aired in six installments on CBC in Canada on January 7, 2015, and on BET in the United States on February 16.
Shailyn Pierre-Dixon is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her role as the young Aminata in the television miniseries The Book of Negroes, for which she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2016. She has also appeared in the films The Best Man Holiday, Suicide Squad and Jean of the Joneses, and she plays the character Frances in the television series Between.
Aileen Theodora Williams (1924-2015) was a Black Canadian activist and founding member of the Canadian Women's Negro Association (CANEWA).
Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(help){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Archives at | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||
How to use archival material |