Sylvia Hamilton

Sylvia D. Hamilton is an award-winning Nova Scotian filmmaker, writer, artist and educator. Her films, Black Mother Black Daughter, Speak It! From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia, Portia White: Think on Me, and The Little Black School House, have been broadcast in Canada and screened at festivals at home and abroad. They are widely used in schools and universities. In 2015, And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, her poetry collection, was a finalist for national and regional poetry awards. She was a contributor to and co-editor of We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History, the first collection of its kind published in Canada. Excavation: A Site of Memory, her multi-media installation, has been invited to galleries and museums in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario. Recognitions include a Gemini Award, the CBC Television Pioneer Award and three honorary degrees. She has served on many not-for profit boards, chaired arts related juries and recently completed an appointment to the Heritage Minister's Expert Advisory Group for Canadian Content in a Digital World. She co-created a unique filmmaking program for Indigenous and women of colour at the National Film Board’s Studio D. She was a member of the national Content Advisory Committee (CAC) to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and served as a mentor for The Trudeau Foundation. She lives in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia and teaches part-time in the School of Journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax.