Lawrence Hill coming to Whistler
Lawrence Hill coming to Whistler
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LAWRENCE HILL, IN WHISTLER, MAY 8
Limited seats. Tickets $20 at www.theviciouscircle.ca
April 6 2010 Whistler, BC – One of Canada’s most celebrated authors will perform in Whistler on Saturday May 8, 2010, at 7pm, at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre. The reading and conversation is presented by the Whistler Writers Group, as part of the Vicious Circle’s ongoing commitment to the corridor’s literary community.
Lawrence Hill’s best-selling 2007 novel The Book of Negroes achieved both popular and literary acclaim winning, amongst other prizes, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Rogers Writers Trust Award in 2008 and CBC’s annual Canada Reads debate in 2009.
An historical saga about a heroine’s fight to win freedom after being sold into slavery as a youth, the book has enjoyed a slow and steady growth that has seen it sell more than 300,000 copies in Canada, be hailed as one of the top 10 Canadian books of the decade by Macleans, Quill and Quire and Now magazine, and be optioned for a movie.
Lawrence Hill, 54, is the author of seven books, including a recent non-fiction book, The Deserter’s Tale: the Story of an Ordinary Solider Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq. He is the winner of a National Magazine Award for a Walrus article, “Is Africa’s Pain Black America’s Burden?”, and the winner of a Wilbur Award for best television documentary for Seeking Salvation: A History of the Black Church in Canada. He worked as a reporter with The Globe and Mail and a parliamentary correspondent for The Winnipeg Free Press.
He says he became a writer at the age of 6 when he was desperate to have a kitten and his father, a civil rights advocate, African American immigrant to Canada and “inveterate pet hater”, told him that if he could provide a well-written letter arguing his case, with no spelling mistakes, the request would be considered. Recalled Hill on his receipt of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, “I wanted that cat. Had to have it. So I poured my heart and soul onto that page. He let me have the cat. And from that point on, every time I wanted something else from my father, he made me write another letter for it. And this is how I became a writer.”
The real “Book of Negroes” is a 150 page ledger created by the Royal British Navy containing biographical information about 3000 African Americans who fled slavery to serve the British, for the promise of liberation in return for service during the American Revolution. When the British lost the war in 1783 they sent those Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia. Many subsequently returned to Africa.
Lawrence Hill is the latest in a line of leading Canadian authors brought to Whistler by the Whistler Writers Group, following Giller prize winner Joseph Boyden, Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize winner Annabel Lyon, BC Book Prize winner Lee Henderson, Stephen Galloway, Caroline Adderson, Bill Gaston, Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, Nancy Lee, Wayne Grady, Merilyn Simonds, Eden Robinson, and Timothy Taylor
Tickets for the Laurence Hill reading go on sale on Thursday, April 8, via the website, www.theviciouscircle.ca. With limited seating, the show is expected to sell out.
