Lawrence Hill Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lawrence Hill is a memoirist and essayist aside from being a famous novelist. He is a Canadian author who was born in the beautiful town of Newmarket in the Canadian province of Ontario way back in the year 1957. His parents are actually American immigrants. He has a mix of blood from a white mother and a black father. His father, Daniel Hill, happens to be the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s chairperson. And during his past years, he served Canada as the Ombudsman of Ontario. Hill’s mother Donna, on the other hand, has a Republican family background in Illinois, USA. She has a great contribution in enacting anti-discrimination legislation in Ontario.

Hill has a degree in Economics, in which he acquired from attending in Laval University located in Quebec City, Canada. Later on, he took up a master’s degree in writing in a prestigious university in Baltimore, Maryland known as Johns Hopkins University. Furthermore, there are several prestigious universities that have awarded him with honorary doctorates such as Dalhousie University, The University of Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier University, and The University of Toronto. While taking up his master’s degree in writing in Johns Hopkins University, Hill also taught fiction writing to several universities and program centers such as The Banff Centre, Sage Hill Writing Experience, the Humber School for Writers, and the Booming Ground program done in the University of British Columbia. Hill is undeniably popular in the literary world. As a matter of fact, he once worked in a particular organization that gives literary awards to those people who have excellent literary works and contributions. He has been into social and academic conferences where he was the guest speaker. These conferences happened not only across Canada, but in some other parts of the world as well like Australia, the Caribbean, South Africa, South America, Europe, Mexico, and the United States.

Hill is a married man who already experienced working and living in several places and countries like France and Spain. His wife, Miranda Hill who also happens to be a writer, is with him all throughout his life journey, together with their 5 children. Lawrence Hill was actually not into writing until he reached his teenage years. He was into running, but he lost his high hopes when he failed to acquire the Olympic Gold medal in 5,000 meter-dash and become an elite athlete despite his years of arduous trainings. He was 14 years old when he first ventured into writing and completed the very first story he wrote. For 4 years, he worked as a full-time reporter in newspapers such as The Winnipeg Free Press and The Globe and Mail. After that, he became the Ottawa’s newspaper bureau chief, and this newspaper covers social, cultural, and economic issues, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Parliament. In the year 1986, he resigned to that newspaper in Ottawa and moved to Spain to work as a full time fiction writer. One thing that pushed Hill even more to work as a writer was the great dedication of his mother and father in writing the history of Black people as well as their great activism in the Human Rights movement.

In his past years, Lawrence Hill also get involved in the advancement of women movement in Africa. Since 1979, he became an active volunteer in several West African countries such as Mali, Cameroon, and Nigeria. In the year 2010, he founded Aminata Fund, which is an organization that supports women in the different countries of Africa that are constantly developing. In the year 2014, he also volunteered in the country of Swaziland bringing the name of Crossroads International. In the year 2007, he wrote Joshua Key’s memoir of service while he was in the American Army, especially about his great contribution in the Iraq War in the year 2004. Since 2010, he also worked as one of the advisory councils of the Book Clubs for Inmates. He’s also one of the members of the Council of Patrons of the Black Loyalist Heritage Society. Since the year 2012, he is a Project Bookmark Canada’s honorary patron. Some of the Canadian organizations where he is one of the active members are the Writers’ Union of Canada and the PEN Canada.

One excellent novel written by Lawrence Hill is The Book of Negroes. It is an award-winning novel published not only in Canada, but in New Zealand, Australia, and in the United States as well. The story revolves around the life of Aminata Diallo, who happens to be the daughter of a midwife and a jeweller in West Africa. At the age of 11, she was kidnapped from their residence in Bayo, Niger. For three months, she was forced to walk to the sea wearing only coffle while great numbers of villagers and strangers were watching her. Aminata was then sent to South Carolina where she worked as a slave under the guidance of her fellow slave, Georgia. In general, The Book of Negroes narrates the life story of Aminata, especially about the struggles she had been through. The interesting story of this book caught the attention of a film director named Clement Virgo. This is the reason why such book became a 6-part television miniseries. This was starred by Louiss Gossett, Jr., Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Aunjanue Ellis. The setting of the miniseries was in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and South Africa.

Another novel written by Lawrence Hill that intensely captured the attention of many people is the Any Known Blood. It is the story of a 38-year-old man who is seeking for truth about his own self as well as his family. He wants to know the whole story of his family’s past. The man in the story is named Langston Cane V, who happens to be a government speechwriter and a divorced man. He is a product of a famous black father and an ordinary white mother. The quest actually started when he was fired as a government speechwriter when he sabotaged the speech of the minister. One thing that attracts the readers on this novel is the fact that it is a story of a five-generation African-Canadian-American family.