Writer-in-residence Lawrence Hill gives a public reading and a writing workshop at UPEI

Lawrence Hill, writer-in-residence at UPEI, will give a public reading on Friday, February 29, at 7:30 p.m. in the UPEI Faculty Lounge, Main Building. Hill is a novelist, journalist, memoir author and documentary film writer.

He will also give a writing workshop on fiction and non-fiction on Saturday, March 8, 1:30-4:45 p.m., in the UPEI Faculty Lounge.

Hill's white mother was a civil rights activist in Washington, D.C., who married an African American in 1953. They left for Canada the day after their marriage. The story of his parents' marriage, emigration to Canada, and experience of raising a family in a white suburb of Toronto is contained in Hill's best-selling memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. In 2005, a documentary film written by Hill, Seeking Salvation: A History of the Black Church in Canada, won the American Wilbur Award for best national television documentary.

The Book of Negroes, Hill's new novel, transports the reader from an African village to a slave plantation in the southern U.S., from the Halifax docks to manor houses of London. It explores the history of British slavery and liberation in the U.S., Canada, England, and West Africa, through one extraordinary woman's tale of migration and survival. It was recently nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

For further information or to register for the workshop, contact the UPEI English Department at (902) 566-0389.