For Immediate Release
|
|
On Saturday, June 2, 2007, Robert J. Sawyer received an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Letters, honoris causa) from Laurentian University, in Sudbury, Ontario; Sawyer also gave the convocation address to graduating arts students that day. The doctorate was given in recognition of his international success as a science-fiction writer.
Laurentian, a bilingual English-and-French institution, is the leading university in northern Ontario. During the same series of convocations, other honorary doctorates were awarded, including to civil-rights leader Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine. Laurentian bestowed its first honorary doctorate of letters in 1970, to Canadian literary legend Farley Mowat.
Sawyer's Hugo Award-winning Hominids and its sequels Humans and Hybrids are set largely in the Sudbury area, including at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and at Laurentian University itself (which is known worldwide for Michael Persinger's research there using transcranial magnetic stimulation to induce religious experiences). Sawyer was nominated for the doctorate by Michael Emond, a tenured professor in Laurentian's Psychology Department. Said Emond when making the nomination: "I could think of no better candidate that exemplifies the reasons why I am proud to be Canadian."
Receiving the honorary doctorate was the final stop on Sawyer's six-week book tour promoting the release of his seventeenth novel, Rollback (Tor, April 2007).
]
[ What's RSS? ]
[ Subscribe to email group ]
[ Email Pressbook Editor ]
Except where otherwise noted, content and design
copyright © 1995–2008 by Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. ("SFWA").
Any opinions expressed
on the SFWA® site are those of the author, not of the SFWA® organization.
SFWA® and Nebula Awards® are registered trademarks
of
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.
2084 visitors have been here
since the counter was last reset.