Lawrence Hill
October 2014 Honorary Degree Recipient
Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)
When Lawrence Hill visited Â鶹´«Ã½ in 2010, he left our community spellbound by both The Book of Negroes, his historical novel of an African woman sold into slavery as a child, and his ability to use literature to move people to action. The book brought the history of African Nova Scotians into the public consciousness through its portrayal of 3,000 Black Loyalists and their migration to the Birchtown/Shelburne area of Nova Scotia.
Lawrence Hill grew up in Don Mills, Ontario, the son of a black father and white mother who were American immigrants and civil rights activists. He has written nine books; his latest, Blood: The Stuff of Life, was the basis for his 2013 Massey Lectures. A champion of liberal arts and social sciences education, Mr. Hill earned a BA in Economics from Laval and an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins. His honorary doctorate from Â鶹´«Ã½ is the first awarded to him in Atlantic Canada.
Lawrence Hill has received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Freedom to Read Award from the Writers Union of Canada, the Award of Excellence from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Libris Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won CBC Radio’s Canada Reads in 2009. He recently co-wrote the adaptation for The Book of Negroes to a TV series. Mr. Hill is an honorary patron of Crossroads International and a member of the Council of Patrons of the Shelburne, Nova Scotia-based Black Loyalist Heritage Society.