Faction: Merging History and Fiction in The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill will discuss how he researched and wrote his international bestseller, The Book of Negroes, with a particular focus on diaries, maps, paintings, newspaper advertisements and other 18th-century documents that helped fuel his imagination.

Hill is the author of ten books, including The Illegal (2015) and The Book of Negroes (2007), winner of various awards including The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. He co-wrote the adaptation for the six-part television miniseries The Book of Negroes, which attracted millions of viewers in the United States and Canada and won CSA awards in a total of eleven categories including best writing, TV movie/miniseries, director, actress, actor and supporting actress. He is currently writing a new novel and a children’s book, and co-writing a television miniseries adaptation of The Illegal for Conquering Lion Pictures. He holds honorary doctorates from seven Canadian universities and colleges, and in 2015 was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, received the Governor General’s History Award and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame.