Lawrence Hill

For the suburb of Bracknell in the UK, see Lawrence Hill, Bracknell Forest, for the inner city area of Bristol, UK see Lawrence Hill, Bristol.

Lawrence Hill
Born	1957
Occupation	novelist, non-fiction writer
Nationality	Canadian
Period	1990s-present
Notable work(s)	Black Berry, Sweet Juice, The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill is an award-winning Canadian novelist and memoirist. He is best known for the 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada and the 2007 novel The Book of Negroes.

Hill, the son of social scientist and public servant Daniel G. Hill and social activist Donna Hill and the brother of singer-songwriter Dan Hill, grew up in the Don Mills neighbourhood of Toronto. He currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario with his wife and five children.

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In 2007, Hill collaborated with former US-Army soldier (now deserter) Joshua Key to write Key's account of the Iraq War. His book The Deserter's Tale, the story of an ordinary soldier who walked away from the war in Iraq is the result of their interviews and meetings.

Lawrence Hill has a deep interest in the advancement of women and girls in Africa. He is an honorary patron with Canadian Crossroads International, and he volunteered overseas with Crossroads three times -- to Niger, Mali and Cameroon in the 1970s and 80s. This experience has had a profound impact on Hill as a person and as a writer. His first published work of fiction, a short story My Side of the Fence, recounted his experiences with Crossroads in Niger.

Awards

The Book of Negroes was longlisted for the Giller Prize and won the 2007 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the 2008 Evergreen Award (presented by the Ontario Library Association) and the 2009 edition of Canada Reads. The book was published in the US under the title Someone Knows My Name.

He won the 2005 National Magazine Award for best essay for his work entitled "Is Africa's Pain Black America's Burden?", published in The Walrus. Hill also wrote the screenplay for Seeking Salvation, a documentary film about the Black church in Canada. Seeking Salvation won the American Wilbur Award for best national television documentary in 2005.

Works

Novels

• Some Great Thing (1992)
• Any Known Blood (1997)
• The Book of Negroes (2007), published as Someone Knows My Name in the U.S.A, Australia, and New Zealand.

Non-fiction

• Trials and Triumphs: The Story of African-Canadians (1993)
• Women of Vision: The Story of the Canadian Negro Women's Association (1996)
• Black Berry, Sweet Juice (2001)
• The Deserter's Tale (2007)

References

• Key, Joshua; Hill, Lawrence (June 2007), The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, Atlantic Monthly, ISBN 0-87113-954-5 

• Key, Joshua; Hill, Lawrence (June 2007), The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, House of Anansi, ISBN 0-88784-208-9 

External links

• CBC The Hour Interview, June 10, 2009.
• Lawrence Hill at Writers in Electronic Residence
• Works by or about Lawrence Hill in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• CBC Digital Archives – Lawrence Hill, Canada Reads author
• Lawrence Hill Papers, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library