Prof. Lawrence Hill, a creative writing professor in the College of Arts, lent his voice to a piece in The Guardian reflecting on the death of Queen Elizabeth II and his own connection to the late monarch.

Hill, an African-Canadian writer whose books explore the Black experience across decades, met the Queen when he was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2008 for his novel The Book of Negroes.

“I am not a fan of the monarchy, but the crimes of the empire could not have happened without the collusion of Canadians and others in the colonies,” he writes in The Guardian. “We in Canada now bear the responsibility of righting the wrongs in our own backyard.”

Hill, the author of 11 books, has taught in the School of English and Theatre Studies since 2016. He is the founder and chair of the organizing committee of Gryphons Read and the chair of the university’s undergraduate creative writing committee as well as the President’s Advisory Committee on Anti-Racism.