Karolyn Smardz Frost

An award-winning author, Karolyn Smardz Frost is the only archaeologist in Canada holding a PhD in Race, Slavery and Imperialism. She is an adjunct professor at both Acadia and Dalhousie Universities in Nova Scotia, where she and her husband now live.

In January 2018, Ms. Smardz Frost was honoured with the Mathieu Da Costa Award for her lifetime contributions to researching, teaching, and publishing in the field of African Canadian History. Her landmark biography, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad (2007), was the first book on African Canadian history to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

Karolyn is a winner of the Michigan Book Prize, the Speakers Award, a finalist for the Atlantic Book Award and a nominated for the Heritage Toronto Award, just to name a few!

Her most recent co-written book is The Underground Railroad: Next Stop Freedom! Published first in 2002, a new edition was released by Dundurn Press in 2022.

Karolyn is the 2023/24 Haig-Brown House Writer in Residence.(opens in new tab)