Lawrence Hill

“...a compulsive storyteller in the oral, African-American tradition.”

Lawrence Hill is the son of American immigrants — a black father and a white mother — who came to Canada the day after they married in 1953 in Washington, D.C. Growing up in the predominantly white suburb of Don Mills, Ontario in the sixties, Hill was greatly influenced by his parents’ work in the human rights movement. Much of Hill’s writing touches on issues of identity and belonging.

Hill is the author of eleven 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 is the winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres. 

“Lawrence Hill’s hugely impressive historical work is completely engrossing and deserves a wide, international readership.”

— The Washington Post

“Astonishing in scope, humanity and beauty, this is one of those very rare novels in which the deep joy of reading transcends its time and place…”

— Editors’ Choice, Historical Novels Review