It’s difficult (if not impossible) to separate the human experience from storytelling. We have a fundamental need to connect with each other and ourselves through the sharing of stories. They are the tool we use to make sense of our lives, experiences, events in history and the world around us. Stories, like interpretation itself, help us make meaning of the world.

Along with our presenting partner, the Association of Nova Scotia Museums, Interpretation Canada’s 2022 National Conference in Halifax will explore the connection between interpretation and storytelling.

Keynote Speaker: Lawrence Hill

LAWRENCE HILL is the internationally bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including (most recently) Beatrice and Croc Harry, The Book of Negroes (which was made into a six-part TV mini-series), and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, also became national bestsellers. Hill’s nonfiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life (the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures), and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.

Hill is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph. His volunteer work has included Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, Book Clubs for Inmates, The Ontario Black History Society, and Walls to Bridges—a non-profit group offering university courses to incarcerated Canadians.

This keynote session is generously supported by Parks Canada Agency.