Black History Makers (Month) 2022

History is now.

In honour of Black History Month, the College of Arts presents Black History Makers, faculty and students making it happen. 

Dislocation and Lost Identity in Beatrice and Croc Harry:
A Conversation with Lawrence Hill - February 17, 5PM

Join us virtually on Thursday, February 17th at 5pm for a conversation with Chioma Nwebube, 4th year student, former President of the Guelph Black Students Association, and member of the President's Anti-Racism Advisory Committee and Lawrence Hill, author and professor of creative writing in the School of English and Theatre Studies.

Lawrence Hill is an award-winning and internationally bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. Hill 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. He helped to create and has chaired Gryphons Read, the university’s common reading program. Last year, he initiated a third-year creative writing course which he taught (to students and to prisoners, together) in the Grand Valley Institution for Women, a federal penitentiary in Kitchener. Much of his volunteer work has been of service to Black communities, through groups such as the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, the Ontario Black History Society, The Writers’ Union of Canada, The University of Toronto Schools, and Crossroads International, for which he remains an honorary patron.

Hill’s most recent book, Beatrice and Croc Harry published by Harper Collins, has been described as “A book to treasure and share across generations” (David Chariandy), and “A journey of epic proportions” (Nadia L. Hohn). Beatrice and Croc Harry is now available in bookstores across Canada.

ASL interpretation will be provided.

Register for this virtual event on Eventbrite. 

History Maker

Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill is an award-winning and internationally bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. Hill’s most recent book, Beatrice and Croc Harry, was published in January 2022. Hill 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. He joined the University of Guelph in 2016 as a professor of creative writing in the School of English and Theatre Studies.

History Maker

Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin is an award-winning poet and “Canada’s Poetry Ambassador” in 2021. Lubrin is the author of the poetry collections The Dyzgraphxst (2020) and Voodoo Hypothesis (2017). She is the winner of the 2021 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize, 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Derek Walcott Prize. She joined the University of Guelph in 2021 as a professor of creative writing in the School of English and Theatre Studies.

History Maker

Dorothy Odartey-Wellington

Dorothy Odartey-Wellington, Hispanic studies professor in the School of Languages and Literatures, is the author of Contemporary Spanish Fiction: Generation X, Transafrohispanismos, and numerous articles on Spanish and Afro-Hispanic creative expression. Odartey-Wellington received the Vice President's Research Excellence Award in 2021, recognizing the global impacts of her work in her field. Her research specializes in Afro-Hispanic Literature, Contemporary Spanish Fiction, and Fictional Narratives of Migration.

History Maker

Chioma Nwebube