Crossing Seas: Refugees in the World and in the Imagination

Mr. Lawrence Hill is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction and recipient of numerous honours. His third novel, The Book of Negroes (2007) won several awards, including The Rogers/Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio Canada’s Le Combat des livres, and The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, which came with a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II. This novel, converted into a television miniseries, also won several distinctions, including eleven Canadian Screen Awards and the NAACP award for best writing of a television motion picture. Much of Mr. Hill’s writing touches on issues of identity and belonging. He delivered a 2013 Massey Lecture on the physical, social, cultural and psychological aspects of blood on peoples and society. Mr. Hill has received five honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, and in 2015 received the Governor General’s History Award.