Thomas King—novelist, scholar, activist, and author of The Inconvenient Indian—will present a free public talk as part of Humanities Week activities, at 5 p.m. Thursday, September 15, in the CAW Student Centre’s Ambassador Auditorium.

Dr. King is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph and published his first novel, Medicine River, in 1989.

The book is considered an honest portrayal of the day-to-day life of Native Canadians and marked King as an important new voice in Canadian literature. In his 1990 article, Godzilla vs. Postcolonial, King challenged the view that all Native literature is a reaction to colonialism, rather than an extension of longer Native tradition.

He was nominated for a Governor General’s award in 1993 for his second novel, Green Grass, Running Water and followed it in 1999 with Truth and Bright Water.

King is noted for mixing humor, traditional Native mythology and contemporary issues in his work, which also includes children’s literature, a number of anthologies on Native writers, The Dead Dog Cafe series of radio scripts for the CBC during the 1990s, and his more recent novel, The Inconvenient Indian.

Find a complete list of Humanities Week activities on the website of the Humanities Research Group.