Photo: Lisa Sakulensky
The University of King’s College Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program is proud to sponsor the keynote lecture of the 2021 AfterWords Literary Festival featuring author Lawrence Hill in conversation with Evelyn C. White.
Hill will talk about his book-length essay Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book, which arose out of a letter he received in 2011 from a man in the Netherlands who was reacting to Hill’s best-selling novel The Book of Negroes. Hill and White will discuss literary censorship and how Hill attempted to come to terms with the book burners’ motives and complaints. This fascinating conversation will include an audience Q&A.
Hill is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Book of Negroes, which was made into a six-part TV mini-series, and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, became national bestsellers. Hill’s nonfiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life, the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures, and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. Hill’s volunteer work has included Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, Book Clubs for Inmates, and The Ontario Black History Society. Hill’s new novel for children, Beatrice and Croc Harry, will be published by HarperCollins in January 2022. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph who has spent more than a decade volunteering in book clubs in federal penitentiaries (and more recently, teaching memoir writing in a penitentiary for women in Kitchener, Ont). He received an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from King’s in 2019. A member of the Order of Canada, he lives in Hamilton, Ont.
Tickets are $8, and are available now through the AfterWords website.
