BIO
Bernardine Evaristo is an award-winning author of novels, young adult fiction as well as literary criticism, crossing various genre boundaries. Born to an English mother and Nigerian father in Woolwich, London, in 1959, she completed the innovative Community Theatre Arts degree at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London. Later she attended Goldsmiths University of London, where she obtained a doctoral degree in Creative Writing. She began her career in the field of drama, and became co-founder of the first black women’s theatre company in Britain, Theatre of Black Women (1982-1988), with Paulette Randall and Patricia Hilaire. The company for instances staged plays such as Silhouette (1983) and Pyeyucca (1984).
Evaristo is drawn to complex topics related to the African diaspora. The writer notably made a name for herself as a novelist with the publication of her novels in verse, Lara (1997), exploring the roots of a young woman’s migrant family, and The Emperor’s Babe (2001), set in Roman London. In Soul Tourists (2005) she explores the history of Black Europe, and in her dystopian novel Blonde Roots (2008) she presents a photonegative account of slavery. Her most recent novels are Mr Loverman (2014) and Girl, Woman, Other (2019). When the latter novel jointly received the Booker Prize, Evaristo became the first black woman to win the prize. With Girl, Woman, Other (2019) she also became the first woman of colour to be the Sunday Times bestseller for a total of five weeks. Girl, Woman Other (2019) revolves around twelve black British women of different ages. Their stories and struggles show a diversity of social and personal backgrounds. Moreover, Evaristo also recently published two non-fiction works: Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (2021) and Look Again: Feminism (2021) which was published in a series by Tate Britain.
Evaristo is also a literary critic for The Guardian and The Independent, and has edited various anthologies and literary magazines. In 2020, she was guest editor for the UK Sunday Times Style magazine, and she continued to work as judge on the Editorial Board of the African Poetry Book Fund. Her fiction has received many awards, including an EMMA Best Book Award and a NESTA. The Emperor’s Babe and Hello Mum were adapted for the radio and broadcast by BBC Radio 4. She received an MBE in 2009 and is currently both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art and director of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2015, she was appointed as Professor in Creative Writing at Brunel University London.
Alongside her engagement in the literary scene, Evaristo actively strives for inclusion in the arts through her contribution to various projects. For example, in 2021 she curated the Sky Arts RSL Writer’s Awards in which five new writers of colour were mentored by experienced authors for a year. She is presently curating Black Britain: Writing Back, a new book series with Penguin UK that republishes out-of-print novels. The first six were released at the beginning of 2021. C.L.R. James's Minty Alley (1936) is the oldest book on the list.
In 2023-2024, Evaristo became Literature Mentor for the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative, representing one of the five art forms covered by the programme. She chose to mentor the Ghanaian novelist Ayesha Harruna Attah in an attempt to illuminate emerging literary voices from Africa.
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• EMMA Best Book Awards 1999
• Orange Prize for Fiction 2009
• Dublin International Literary Award
• British Book Awards’ Fiction Book
• NESTA
• Indie Book Award for Fiction
• Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize
• Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020
• Man Booker Prize 2019
Bibliography
Abram, Nicola. “‘being/together’: Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and the Black British women’s movement.” Contemporary Women’s Writing, 2024, n.p.
Acquarone, Cecilia. Barriers, Borders and Crossings in British Postcolonial Fiction: A Gender Perpective. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
Adeniyi, Emmanuel. “Paratactic Narrative Mode and Taxonomic Conundrum of a Postmodern Verse Novel: Reading From Bernadine Evaristo’s Lara.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 16, no. 2, 2020: pp. 157-170.
Bernard, Louise. “Bernardine Evaristo.” Twentieth-First Century ‘Black’ British Writers, edited by Victoria Arana, Detroit (MI), Thomas Gale, 2009, pp. 119-127.
“Bernardine Evaristo: The Waterstones Interview - Booker Prize 2019 Winner.” YouTube, 17 Oct 2019. Web.
Buonanno, Giovanna. “Black British Women’s Theatre in the 1980s and the Politics of Representation.” Stages of Embodiment in Postcolonial Theatre, special issue of Textus: English Studies in Italy,vol. 30, no. 2, 2017: pp. 67-82.
Burkitt, Katharine. “Blonde Roots, Black History: History and the form of the slave narrative in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 48, no. 4, 2012: pp. 406-417.
—. “Breaking the Mould: Escaping the Term 'Black British' in the Poetry of Bernardine Evaristo and Jackie Kay.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, vol. 60, 2010: pp. 83-95.
—. “Imperial Reflections: The Post-Colonial Verse-Novel as Post-Epic.” Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 157-169.
—. Literary Form as Postcolonial Critique. Ashgate, 2012.
Collins, Michael. “My Preoccupations are in My DNA: An Interview with Bernardine Evaristo.” Callaloo, vol. 31, no. 4, 2008: pp. 1199-1203.
Coskun, Kubra Kangulec. “Exploration of the Maternal Semiotic for Female Subjectivity in Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe.” Interactions, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017: n.p.
Cuder-Domínguez, Pilar. “Black Bodies in History: Bernardine Evaristo’s Fiction.” Cultural Migrations and Gendered Subjects: Colonial and Post-Colonial Representations of the Female Body, edited by Silvia Pilar Castro Borrego and María Isabel Romero Ruiz, Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2011, pp. 55-74.
—. “Ethnic Cartographies of London in Bernardine Evaristo and Zadie Smith.” European Journal of English Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, 2004: pp. 173-188.
—. “(Re)Turning to Africa: Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara and Lucinda Roy’s Lady Moses.” Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature, edited by Kadija Sesay, London, Hansib, 2005, n.p.
Derks, Jackielee. “Snow White Remixed: Confronting Aesthetic Obsession and Race in Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, vol. 7, no. 2-3, 2017: pp. 139-148.
Diggins, Alex. “Bernardine Evaristo shoulders weighty themes lightly: Girl, Woman, Other
reviewed.” Rev. of Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo. The Spectator, 21 Dec. 2019.
Evaristo, Bernardine.“CSI Europe: African Elements. Fragments. Reconstruction. Case Histories. Motive. Personal.” Wasafiri, vol.23, no. 4, 2008: pp. 2-7.
—. Island of Abraham. Peepal Tree, 1994.
—. Lara. Angela Royal Publication, 1997.
—. The Emperor’s Babe. Penguin, 2001.
—. Soul Tourists. Penguin, 2005.
—. Blonde Roots. Penguin, 2008.
—. Lara. Bloodaxe, 2009.
—. Hello Mum. Penguin, 2010.
—. Mr. Loverman. Penguin, 2013.
—. Girl, Woman, Other. Penguin, 2019.
—. Manifesto: On Never Giving Up. Penguin, 2021.
—. Look Again: Feminism. Tate Publishing, 2019.
Gendusa, Ester. “Bernardie Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe: Re- narrating Roman Britannia, De-essentialising European History.” Synthesis, vol. 8, 2015: pp. 47-62.
Gunning, Dave. “Cosmopolitanism and Marginalisation in Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe.” Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature, edited by Kadija Sesay, Hansib, 2005, pp. 165-178.
Gustar, Jennifer. “Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe: Re-Narrating Roman Britannia, De-Essentialising European History.” Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies, no. 8, 2015: pp. 47-62.
—. “Welcoming Familiars: Memory Work in Bernadine Evaristo’s Fiction.” Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women’s Writing: Race and Narrative Innovation, 2024, n.p.
Hauthal, Janine. “Rewriting ‘white’ genres in search of Afro-European identities Travel and crime fiction by Bernardine Evaristo and Mike Phillips.” English Text Construction, vol. 10, no. 1, 2017: pp. 37-58.
Hooper, Karen. “On the Road: Bernardine Evaristo interviewed by Karen Hooper.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 3, 2006: pp. 2–15.
Hutchinson, Marsha, and Zoe Norridge. “Great Writers at Home: Bernardine Evaristo on writing Britain’s Black History.” Youtube, uploaded by Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds, 29 August 2017.
Koegler, Caroline. “Memorializing African Being and Becoming in the Atlantic World: Affective Herstories by Yaa Gyasi and Bernadine Evaristo.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect, Routledge, 2022, pp. 374-385.
Le Gendre, K. Rev. of Blonde Roots, by Bernardine Evaristo. The Independent, 24 Aug. 2008, Web.
Magree, Victoria. “‘Make of Me a Memory Once More’: Remember Black Europe Through Literature.” Discover Society, vol. 21, 2015: n.p..
McCarthy, Karen. “Bernardine Evaristo Interviewed by Karen McCarthy”. Valparaiso Poetry Review: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, 2006, n.p.
McLeod, John. “Transcontinental Shifts: Afroeurope and the Fiction of Bernardine Evaristo.” Afroeurope@n Configurations: Readings and Projects, edited by Sabrina Brancato. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp. 168-182.
Munki, Linda Muloh. “The Female Subject in a Multicultural Context: Intersectional Reading of Bernadine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe and Girl, Woman, Other.” The Journal of English Language, Literature, and Culture, vol. 7, no. 1, 2024: pp. 17-28.
Muñoz-Valdivieso, Sofia. “Revisiting the Black Atlantic: Bernadine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots.” Interactions: Ege University Journal of British and American Studies, vol. 19, no. 1-2, 2010: pp. 53-64.
Niven, Alastair. “Alastair Niven in Conversation with Bernardine Evaristo.” Wasafiri, vol. 16, no. 34, 2001: pp. 15-20.
Nunius, Sabine. “Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists: Black Britishness via a European Detour.” Coping With Difference: New Approaches in the Contemporary British Novel (2000-2006), LIT-Verlag, 2009, pp. 156-189.
Phillips,Rowan. “Review The Emperor’s Babe.” Callaloo, vol. 27, no. 2, 2004: pp. 565-569.
Procter, James. “Bernardine Evaristo.” British Council Literature. Writers. 2002. Web.
Rass, Theresa. “A Poetic Journey: ‘The Emperor’s Babe’ in Search of Identity in Virtual Places of Ancient Londinium.” GRIN, 2010, Web.
Rosenberg, Ingrid von. “If… Bernardine Evaristo’s (Gendered) Reconstructions of Black European History.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 58, no. 4, 2014: pp. 381-395.
Sánchez-Palencia, Carolina. “Feminist/queer diasporic temporality in Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019).” European Journal of Women’s Studies, vol. 29, no. 2, 2022: pp. 319-330.
Sarikaya-Sen, Merve. “Reconfiguring Feminism: Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.” The European Legacy, vol. 26, no. 3-4, 2021: pp. 303-315.
Scafe, Suzanne. “Unsettling the Centre: Black British Fiction.” The History of British Women Writers. Vol. X, edited by Mary Eagleton and Emma Parker, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 214-228.
—. “Reading Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender in Fiction by Black British Women Writers.” The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 385-405.
Sethi, Anita. “Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I Want to Put Presence into Absence.’” The Guardian, 27 April 2019.
Tolan, Fiona. “A life can be a manifesto: Connecting Bernadine Evaristo to a history of feminist manifestos.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism, Routledge, 2023, pp. 419-431.
Toplu, Şebnem. Fiction Unbound Bernardine Evaristo. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.
—. “‘Suicide Heights’: Council Estates as Sites of Entrapment and Resistance in Hello Mum.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2014: pp. 169-174.
Tournay-Theodotou, Petra. “Reconfigurations of ‘Home as a Mythic Place of Desire’: Bernardine Evaristo's Soul Tourists.” Projections of Paradise. Ideal Elsewheres in Postcolonial Migrant Literature, edited by Helga Ramsey-Kurz and Geetha Ganapathy-Doré, Rodopi, 2011, pp. 105-121.
Van Weyenberg, Astrid. “Adapting European heritage: Bernadine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005) and Omar Victor Diop’s Project Diaspora (2014).” Continuum, 2024: pp. 1-15.
Velickovic, Vedrana. “Melancholic Travellers and the Idea of (Un)Belonging in Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara and Soul Tourists.” Journal for Postcolonial Writing, vol. 48, no. 1, 2012: pp. 65-78.
Waijrin, W. and Labibah, Maulina. “Inequality Experienced by Black Women Characters in Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other: A Black Feminism Study.” Journal of Language and Literature Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, 2024: pp. 671-679.
Walters, Tracey. “Black British Women’s and the Politics of Hair.” Diasporic Women’s Writing of the Black Atlantic: (En) Gendering Literature and Performance, edited by Emilia M. Durán-Almarza and Esther Álvarez-López, Routledge, 2014, pp. 60-62.
Weedon, Chris. “Identity and Belonging in Contemporary Black British Writing” Black British Writing, edited by R. Victoria Arana and Lauri Ramey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 73-98.
Whittle, Matthew. “Decolonization and the aesthetics of disorder: Naipaul, Evaristo, Boland.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 58, no. 3, 2023: pp. 541-544.
