Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo OBE FRSL FRSA is a British-Nigerian author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other, jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019, making her the first Black woman to win the prize. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820. In 2020, she received the British Book Awards for Fiction and Author of the Year.
Evaristo has long supported the inclusion of writers and artists of colour. She established The Complete Works Poetry Mentoring Programme from 2007 to 2017 and founded the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, which ran from 2012 to 2022. She was a founding member of both the first black women’s theatrical group in Britain, Theatre of Black Women (1982–1988) and the writer development agency Spread the Word. Evaristo 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 an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Refs: Bernardine Evaristo Bernardine Evaristo (bevaristo.com).
Bernardine Evaristo – Wikipedia
Image credit: Bernardine Evaristo 2018 Credit Jennie Scott USE
