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. On his father’s side, Hill’s grandfather and great grandfather were university-educated, ordained ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
His mother came from a Republican family in Oak Park, Illinois, graduated from Oberlin College and went on to become a civil rights activist in 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.
Formerly a reporter with The Globe and Mail and parliamentary correspondent for The Winnipeg Free Press, Hill also speaks French and Spanish. He has lived and worked across Canada, and in Baltimore, and in Spain and France.
As a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International, he has travelled to the West African countries Niger, Cameroon, and Mali. He has a B.A. in economics from Laval University in Quebec City and an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Other books by Lawrence Hill include: Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada, Any Known Blood, Some Great Thing, and The Deserter’s Tale: the Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.
Ask your local bookseller or public library for these books by Lawrence Hill.
