29 Facts About Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill was born on January 24,1957 and is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist.

Lawrence Hill 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.

Lawrence Hill was selected in 2013 for the Massey Lectures: he drew from his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life, published that year.

Lawrence Hill's father was black and his mother was white.

Lawrence Hill served as chair of the jury for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Lawrence Hill published a still seminal work about Black history in Canada: The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada.

Lawrence Hill met his father in Washington, DC, where she worked for a Democratic US Senator and became a civil rights activist.

Lawrence Hill lobbied the Ontario government to enact anti-discrimination legislation.

Daniel and Donna Lawrence Hill co-founded The Ontario Black History Society with Wilson O Brooks and other friends.

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 Lawrence Hill became a singer-songwriter and writer, and their sister, the late Karen Lawrence Hill, was a writer.

Lawrence Hill has lived and worked in Baltimore, Maryland; Spain, and France.

Lawrence Hill has served numerous times on juries granting literary awards or writing grants.

Lawrence Hill has frequently spoken at academic and social conferences, literary festivals, libraries, universities and high schools across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Europe, South America, South Africa, the Caribbean and Australia.

Lawrence Hill is a Senior Fellow at Massey College at the University of Toronto.

Lawrence Hill threw himself into writing in his teenage years and completed his first story at the early age of 14.

Lawrence Hill 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.

The work of his parents in the human rights movement and Black history greatly influenced Lawrence Hill's work related to identity and belonging as a writer.

The Walrus published Lawrence Hill's award-winning essay "Is Africa's Pain Black America's Burden", and a short story entitled "Meet You at the Door".

Lawrence 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.

Lawrence Hill was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.

Deeply passionate about the advancement of women and girls in Africa, Lawrence Hill has worked as a volunteer in the West African countries of Niger, Cameroon and Mali since 1979.

Lawrence Hill's 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.

Lawrence Hill returned in 2014 as a Crossroads volunteer in Swaziland.

In 2007, Lawrence 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.

Lawrence Hill has been on the advisory council of Book Clubs for Inmates since 2010.

Lawrence Hill has been a member of the Council of Patrons of the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, since 2011.

Lawrence Hill is an honorary patron of Project Bookmark Canada since 2012.

Lawrence Hill 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.