The Humanities Research Group (HRG) will kick off its new season of in-person events with a talk by award-winning Canadian author Lawrence Hill. "Faction: Lawrence Hill Reflects on Merging History and Fiction" is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 22, 5 p.m., in the Performance Hall at the SoCA Armouries building in downtown Windsor.

Hill is the author of 11 books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Book of Negroes and The Illegal. In 2022, Harper Collins Canada published his latest novel, Beatrice and Croc Harry. Hill has volunteered with Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, and the Ontario Black History Society.

“The HRG is thrilled to return to in-person events with such a luminary and important figure from the international literary stage,” says director Kim Nelson, an associate professor in the School of Creative Arts.

A professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph, Hill also teaches and visits with book clubs in federal penitentiaries. He is writing a new novel about the thousands of African American soldiers who helped build the Alaska Highway in northern British Columbia and Yukon during the Second World War.

In his talk, Hill will describe his passion in merging the past, present, and future with fiction, and his attempts to explore, dramatize, and popularize little-known corners of Black history and culture in Canada and around the world. He will read brief snippets from his novels The Book of Negroes, The Illegal, and Beatrice and Croc Harry, and describe his novel-in-progress.

Admission is free and open to the public, no advance registration required. The SoCA Armouries is located at 37 University Ave. East, at Freedom Way.

Explore the Humanities Research Group’s complete line-up of guest speakers on its website: www.uwindsor.ca/hrg.