An Evening With Lawrence Hill

This past May, I was given the chance to interview the author Lawrence Hill on stage as he came to town to to accept an honourary degree from UNBC. I’d never done anything like this and to prepare I did something else I’d never done before– read a whole bunch of things by and about him to prepare: essays, interviews, novels and his Massey Lecture series. It was a different way of experiencing an author’s work and I found recurring themes and ideas that I wouldn’t have noticed using my more traditional method of switching up authors between books. The deep-dive method is one I’m eager to try again.

Anyways, I also recorded the interview and now I’m putting it here. It took place just days after Mr. Hill returned from Switzerland to be with his mother as she chose to die, something that had not yet been made public via this lovely essay in the Globe and Mail. We talk about family here, as well as other recurring themes of Hill’s work: race, politics, the state of the world and his different ways of working. He was very generous with his thoughts and it was definitely a highlight of the year for me.

Lawrence Hill Interview at UNBC, May 2018