Royal Roads University is featuring Victoria author Esi Edugyan at a free, virtual event Thursday as part of its 25th Anniversary Changemakers Speakers Series.
University president Philip Steenkamp will host.
Edugyan, who was raised in Calgary by her immigrant Ghanian parents, is the first Black woman to have won the Scotiabank Giller Prize — winning it twice.
One of her wins was for the book Washington Black, which she will talk about Thursday.
She said of the book: “It’s about how do you try to live in the world when everything you know has been blood and violence and … you’re in a world that rejects you.”
Upcoming speakers include provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on June 8 and and journalist/historian Gwynne Dyer on Sept. 16.
Victoria-born Thomas Homer-Dixon previously appeared. He holds a research chair in the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Among his books are The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, winner of Canada’s 2006 National Business Book Award.
The original plan was to hold the talks at locations around the region, but the series moved online as a result of the pandemic, with topics ranging from diversity and equity to post-pandemic recovery.
Thursday’s talk runs from 4 to 5 p.m. on Facebook.
