Hill, Quarrington to attend Writer’s Festival

Lawrence Hill will be among the line-up of 50 authors at this year’s Writ­ers’ Festival.

Hill’s latest book (fiction) is The Book of Negroes, pub­lished in 2007 by Harper Col­lins. It was named one of the 100 best books of 2007 by Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and recently won the 2008 Com­monwealth writer’s prize for best book (Canada and Carib­bean region).

Hill is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction, including Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada; Any Known Blood; Some Great Thing; Women of Vision: The Story of the Canadian Negro Women’s Association, and a children’s book, Trials and Triumphs: The Story of African Canadians.

Hill’s first two books ex­plore complications of race and identity, as does his bestselling memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada, released in 2001. He is credited with es­tablishing those issues as literary themes and challenging long-held notions about slavery in Canada.

 Paul Quarrington will join the festival’s 20th anniversary set with Leon Rooke and Ali­stair MacLeod.

Quarrington’s latest book (fiction) is The Ravine pub­lished in 2008 by Random House. As well as being a novelist, Quarrington is also a musician, most recently in the band Porkbelly Futures, an award-winning screenwriter, and an acclaimed non-fiction writer. His novel, Galveston, was nominated for the Giller prize and Whale Music won the Governor General’s award for fiction in 1989. Quarrington won the Ste­ph­en Leacock medal for King Leary, which was also the win­ner of the 2008 CBC Canada Reads contest.

Eden Mills Writers’ Festival will be held Sept. 7 from noon to 6pm, with 50 guest authors in attendance. It includes youth and children’s sites. A jazz concert will take place Sept. 5 and the seminar on travel writing will be held at Camp Edgewood on Sept. 6.

Tickets are $10 at the gate or $8 advance. Free shuttle buses run on Sept. 7 only from Guelph to Eden Mills leaving The River Run at 11am and The Uni­versity Centre at 11:15am, and then every 40 minutes. See edenmillswritersfestival.ca for details.

 

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