“Good writing can come from anywhere,” says author Thomas King. “I don’t know that there are any social formulas for the production of fine literature… the essential elements are a keen imagination, opportunity, and passion.”  

Thomas is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and photographer of Cherokee and Greek descent. His fiction includes Green Grass, Running Water; Indians on Vacation; the Dreadful Water mystery series; the poetry collection 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin and the Governor General’s Literary Award winning The Back of the Turtle. His non-fiction book The Truth About Stories won the Trillium Book Award, and The Inconvenient Indian won the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the RBC Taylor Prize. A member of the Order of Canada, Thomas was chair of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and taught at the Universities of Lethbridge and Guelph before retiring. 

His latest novel, Sufferance, is hailed by the Toronto Star as “a powerful reading experience, a combination of genres and narrative approaches so deftly blended the reader is forced off-balance at almost every turn. There are elements of a skillfully handled thriller, and a low-key, almost bucolic community narrative. It is a thoroughly political novel . . . both entirely unexpected and completely satisfying, [it] is a reminder of why he is one of Canada’s foremost writers.”  

Thomas lives in Guelph with his partner, Helen Hoy. 

Thomas is supported by Author Patron Blurred Words.

Book: https://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443463102/sufferance/

Appearing in:
6. Privilege, Power, and Dead Billionaires

Past Festival Appearances:

2018: Robertson Davies Dinner
2013