“Since winning the Booker Prize in 2019, my voice has been amplified along with the causes that are close to my heart.”
A Booker Prize-winning author whose writing and many projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora.
Biography
The British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other and several acclaimed novels. Her other works span the genres of verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama. Much of Evaristo’s writing and many of her projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora.
Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. She has won numerous awards and received many more honours, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. Her verse novel The Emperor’s Babe and the novella Hello Mum have both been adapted as BBC Radio 4 plays. In 2015 she wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary, Fiery Inspiration: Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement. Her novel, Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize 2019.
Evaristo guest-edited the UK Sunday Times Style magazine in July 2020 with a black women & womxn take-over. Her literary criticism and other writing has appeared in many national newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Observer, Times, New Statesman, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. She has also judged many literary awards and is on the Editorial Board of the African Poetry Book Fund (USA) for all its publications and prizes.
A staunch and longstanding activist and advocate for the inclusion of artists and writers of colour, Evaristo has initiated several successful schemes to ensure increased representation in the creative industries.
