Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, (born 28 May 1959), is a British author and academic. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. Her novel "Girl, Woman, Other", won the Booker Prize in 2019, making her the first black woman and the first black British person to win the Booker. Evaristo is a longstanding advocate for the inclusion of writers and artists of colour. She founded the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2012 and initiated The Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme in 2007. She co-founded Spread the Word writer development agency with Ruth Borthwick (1995 –present) and Britain's first black women's theatre company (1982–1988), Theatre of Black Women. She organised Britain's first major black theatre conference, Future Histories, for the Black Theatre Forum, (1995) at the Royal Festival Hall, and Britain's first major conference on black British writing, "Tracing Paper" (1997) at the Museum of London. Evaristo is a lifetime Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, University of Oxford and International Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2021 she succeeded Sir Richard Eyre as President of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. She was Vice -Chair of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) and in 2020 she became a lifetime Vice President, before becoming President of the Royal Society of Literature (2022–2026). She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen's 2009 Birthday Honours, and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen's 2020 Birthday Honours, both for services to literature. Biography. Evaristo was born in Eltham, south-east London, and christened Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo. She was raised in Woolwich, the fourth of eight children born to an English mother  of English, Irish and German heritage, who was a schoolteacher, and a Nigerian father, Julius Taiwo Bayomi Evaristo (1927–2001), known as Danny, born in British Cameroon, raised in Nigeria, who migrated to Britain in 1949 and became a welder and the first black councillor in the Borough of Greenwich, for the Labour Party. Her paternal grandfather, Gregorio Bankole Evaristo, was a Yoruba Aguda who sailed from Brazil to Nigeria. He was a customs officer (d. 1927). Her paternal grandmother, Zenobia Evaristo, née Sowemima (d. 1967) was from Abeokuta in Nigeria. Her mother's paternal great-grandfather, Christoph Heinrich Louis Wilkening , arrived in London from Germany in the 1860s and settled in Woolwich, while her mother's maternal grandmother, Mary Jane Robbins, arrived in London from Birr, County Offaly, in Ireland in the 1880s and settled in Islington. Evaristo was educated at Greenwich Young People's Theatre (now Tramshed, in Woolwich), Eltham Hill Grammar School for Girls, the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, and Goldsmiths College, University of London, receiving her doctorate in creative writing in 2013. In 2019 she was appointed Woolwich Laureate by the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, reconnecting to and writing about the home town  she left when she was 18. Writer and editor. Evaristo is the author of two non-fiction books, and eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. She notably experiments with form and narrative perspective, often merging the past with the present, fiction with poetry, the factual with the speculative, and reality with alternate realities (as in her 2008 novel "Blonde Roots"). Her verse novel "The Emperor's Babe" (Penguin, 2001) is about a black teenage girl, whose parents are from Nubia, coming of age in Roman London nearly 2,000 years ago. It won  an Arts Council Writers' Award 2000; a NESTA Fellowship Award in 2003; it was chosen by "The Times" as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade in 2010; and it was adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play in 2013. Next Evaristo published "Soul Tourists" (Penguin, 2005), about a mismatched couple driving across Europe to the Middle East, which featured ghosts of real figures of colour from European history. Her novel "Blonde Roots" (Penguin, 2008) is a satire that inverts the history of the transatlantic slave trade and replaces it with a universe where Africans enslave Europeans. "Blonde  Roots" won the Orange Youth Panel Award and Big Red Read Award, and was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Evaristo's other books include the verse novel "Lara" (Bloodaxe Books, 2009, with an earlier version published in 1997), which fictionalised the multiple cultural strands of her family history going back over 150 years as well as her mixed-race London childhood. This won the EMMA Best Novel Award in 1998. Her novella "Hello Mum" (Penguin, 2010) was chosen as "The Big Read" for the County of Suffolk, and  adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play in 2012. As an editor, she guest-edited "The Sunday Times" Style magazine (UK) in July 2020 with a groundbreaking black-woman/-xn takeover, featuring an array of young artists, activists and change-makers. She guest-edited the September 2014 issue of "Mslexia" magazine, the Poetry Society of Great Britain's centenary winter issue of "Poetry Review" (2012), titled "Offending Frequencies"; a special issue of "Wasafiri" magazine called "Black Britain: Beyond Definition" (Routledge, 2010), with poet Karen McCarthy Woolf; "Ten", an anthology of Black and Asian poets, with poet Daljit Nagra (Bloodaxe Books, 2010 ) and in 2007, she co-edited the New Writing Anthology "NW15" (Granta/British Council). She was also editor of "FrontSeat" intercultural magazine in the 1990s, and one of the editors of "Black Women Talk Poetry" anthology (published in 1987 by the Black Womantalk Poetry collective of which Evaristo was part), Britain's first such substantial anthology, featuring among its 20 poets Jackie Kay, Dorothea Smartt and Adjoa Andoh. Her 2014 novel "Mr Loverman" (Penguin UK, 2013/ Akashic Books USA, 2014) is about a septuagenarian Caribbean Londoner, a closet homosexual considering his options after a 50-year marriage to his wife . It won the Publishing Triangle Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction (USA) and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. In 2015 she wrote and presented a two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary, "Fiery Inspiration" – on Amiri Baraka, BBC Radio 4, 2015. Evaristo is a contributor to many anthologies and books including "New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African descent" (2019), edited by Margaret Busby. Evaristo's novel "Girl, Woman, Other" (May 2019, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK), is an innovative polyvocal "fusion fiction" about 12 primarily black British women. Their ages span 19 to 93 and  they are a mix of cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, classes and geographies, and the novel charts their hopes, struggles and intersecting lives. In July 2019 the novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize and made the Booker Prize shortlist, announced on 3 September 2019, alongside books by Margaret Atwood, Lucy Ellmann, Chigozie Obioma, Salman Rushdie and Elif Shafak, and on 14 October it won the prize jointly with Atwood's "The Testaments". The win made her the first black woman and first black British author to win the prize. "Girl, Woman, Other" was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize  for Fiction. In 2020, Evaristo was recognised for her writing as one of the United Kingdom's most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage by being included in the 2021 edition of the annual "Powerlist". In 2020 she won the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year, as well as the Indie Book Award for Fiction as well as many other awards. The novel was one of Barack Obama's 19 Favourite Books of 2019 and Roxane Gay's Favourite Book of 2019. In June 2020 Evaristo became the first woman of  colour and the first black British writer to get to number one in the UK paperback fiction charts, where she held the top spot for five weeks and spent 44 weeks in the Top 10. Evaristo's writing also includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and projects for stage and radio. Two of her books, "The Emperor's Babe" (2001) and "Hello Mum" (2010), have been adapted into BBC Radio 4 dramas. Her ninth book, "Manifesto: On Never Giving Up", is published by Penguin UK (October 2021) and Grove Atlantic USA (2022). Her tenth book, "Feminism" (November 2021 ), is part of Tate Britain's "Look Again" series (Tate Publishing). She offers a personal survey of the representation of the art of British women of colour in the context of the gallery's forthcoming major rehang. Teaching and touring. Evaristo has taught creative writing since 1994. She has also been awarded many writing fellowships and residencies including the Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2015; for the British Council at Georgetown University, Washington DC; Barnard College/ Columbia University, New York; University of the Western Cape, South Africa; the Virginia Arts Festival (Virginia, USA), and Writing  Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. She taught the University of East Anglia-"Guardian" "How to Tell a Story" course for four seasons in London up to 2015. Since 1997, she has accepted more than 130 international invitations as a writer. These involve writer-residencies and visiting fellowships, British Council tours, book tours, teaching creative writing courses and workshops as well as keynotes, talks and panels at many conferences and literary festivals. She chaired the 32nd and 33rd British Council Berlin Literature Seminar in 2017 and 2018. She also tours the UK on an ongoing basis and regularly hosts  and chairs events. Critic and advocate. Evaristo has written many articles, essays, fictions and book reviews for UK publications including: "The Times", "Vanity Fair", "The Guardian", "The Observer", "The Independent", "Vogue", "Harper's Bazaar UK", "The Times Literary Supplement", "Conde Naste Traveller", "Wasafiri", and the "New Statesman". Aside from founding the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, she has judged many prizes and in 2012 was chair of judges for both the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2006, Evaristo initiated an Arts Council-funded report delivered by Spread the Word writer development agency into  why black and Asian poets were not getting published in the UK, which revealed that less than 1 per cent of all published poetry is by poets of colour. When the report was published, she then initiated The Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme, with Nathalie Teitler and Spread the Word. In this national development programme, 30 poets were mentored, each over a one- or two-year period, and many went on to publish books, win many awards and receive serious recognition for their poetry. (See The Complete Works alumnae list at the end.) Evaristo has also served on many key  councils and advisory committees for various organisations including the Council of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) since 2017, the Arts Council of England, the London Arts Board, the British Council Literature Advisory Panel, the Society of Authors, the Poetry Society (Chair) and "Wasafiri" international literature magazine. In the 1980s, together with Paulette Randall and Patricia Hilaire, she founded Theatre of Black Women, the first theatre company in Britain of its kind. In the 1990s she organised Britain's first black British writing conference, held at the Museum of London, and also Britain's first black British theatre conference, held  at the Royal Festival Hall. In 1995 she co-founded and directed Spread the Word, London's writer development agency. Evaristo was elected as President of the Royal Society of Literature from the end of 2021 (following the retirement of her predecessor Dame Marina Warner), becoming the first writer of colour and only the second woman to be hold the position in the Socoety's 200-year history, and she stated at the time of the announcement: "Literature is not a luxury, but essential to our civilisation. I am so proud, therefore, to be the figurehead of such an august  and robust literature organisation that is so actively and urgently committed to being inclusive of the widest range of outstanding writers from every demographic and geographical location in Britain, and to reaching marginalised communities through literature projects, including introducing young people in schools to some of Britain’s leading writers who visit, teach and discuss their work with them." Other activity. Evaristo was featured as the castaway on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" on 20 September 2020, interviewed by Lauren Laverne. A portrait of Evaristo (2002) by photographer Sal Idriss is in the collection of the National Portrait  Gallery, London. Evaristo has delivered many keynotes, speeches and lectures worldwide since 1994. She delivered the "New Statesman"/Goldsmiths Prize lecture on 30 September 2020. In October 2020 she gave the opening keynote address at the Frankfurt Book Fair's Publishing Insights conference, in which she called on publishers to hire more people represent a wider range of communities: "We have to have people working in the industry from all these communities who are looking for something beyond the cliches and stereotypes." In Autumn 2020 she was profiled by Melvyn Bragg as the subject of the documentary series "The South Bank  Show", and in September 2021, her life and work was profiled by Alan Yentob in the documentary "Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up", in the BBC One documentary series "Imagine". In October 2020 it was announced that she is curating a new book series with Hamish Hamilton at Penguin Random House publishers, "Black Britain: Writing Back", which involves bringing back into print and circulation books from the past. The first six books, novels, were published in February 2021, including "Minty Alley" (1936) by C. L. R. James and "The Dancing Face" (1997) by Mike Phillips. As a Sky Arts Ambassador she  is spearheading the Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards, providing mentoring for under-represented writers. Personal life. She is married to writer David Shannon, whom she met in 2006, and whose debut novel was launched in March 2021. The Complete Works alumnae. "Group One" "Group Two" "Group Three"