Lawrence Hill

My guest on this episode is Lawrence Hill. Lawrence is the author of eleven books including the novels The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, and the memoir Black Berry Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada and Blood: The Stuff of Life, which was the CBC Massey Lecture in 2013. Lawrence is the winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres. Lawrence’s most recent book, his first YA novel, is Beatrice and Croc Harry, which was published in 2022 by HarperCollins Canada. The French version of Beatrice and Croc Harry is about to be published in Quebec by Mémoire d'encrier. It will come out in Europe in the fall. Author David Chariandy called Beatrice and Croc Harry “A modern fable of great beauty and sophistication.”

Lawrence and I talk about some peculiarities concerning his author name, about the grief that helped compel him to write his first book for children, and about the one disappointment he had when he met Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Lawrence Hill: lawrencehill.com

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact