BIO
Diana Omo Evans is an author of novels, short fiction and criticism. Born in London to a Nigerian mother and a Yorkshire-born father, she spent part of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. After obtaining a degree in media studies from the University of Sussex, she continued to study creative writing at the University of East Anglia alongside her engagement with dancing. Evans subsequently started working as a journalist and poetic author, writing about literature and culture for platforms such as The Guardian and The New York Review of Books. She has also filled a position as associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London and taught various writing workshops. In 2020, she was appointed as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, marking its 200th anniversary.
Evans’ debut novel, 26a (2005), was inspired by her own childhood growing up in Neasden (North London) and the death of her twin. It received high acclaim, being shortlisted for various literary prizes and winning the Betty Trask award for its critical significance. The writer also became the deciBel Writer of the Year winner at the British Book Awards, and received the Orange Award for New Writers in 2006. In turn, her second novel The Wonder (2009) explores the world of dance as two siblings living on a houseboat in West London delve into their family’s past. Ordinary People (2018) subsequently relates the lives of two couples in South London as various political upheavals unfold. This novel received the South Bank Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for a series of other prizes, including the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Notably, her most recent ‘state-of-the-nation’ novel, A House for Alice (2023) continues to follow selected characters from her previous book and examines themes of belonging and community in light of the bearing witness to the disastrous Grenfell Tower fire. This highlights the socio-political potential for providing critique and discussion through the act of writing. Her shorter fiction has also been widely anthologised. The cityscape of London constitutes a central figure here alongside the use of autobiographical reflections. Her upcoming collection of non-fiction essay entitled I Want to Talk to You: And Other Conversations is planned to be published in 2025.
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• Betty Trask 2005
• Commonwealth Best First Book Award 2005
• deciBel Writer of the Year at the British Book Awards 2005
• Orange Award for New Writers 2005
• Whitbread First Novel 2005
• International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2005
• Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019
• Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction 2019
• Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2019
• South Bank Sky Arts Award 2019
• Rathbones Folio Prize 2019
• Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2023
Bibliography
Anderson, Hephzibah. “A House for Alice by Diana Evans Review – Vivid Tale of a Homesick Matriarch.” Rev. of A House for Alive, by Diana Evans, The Guardian, 4 April 2023.
Bryce, Jane. ““Half and Half Children”: Third-Generation Writers and the New Nigerian Novel.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 39, no. 2, 2008: pp. 49-67.
Busby, Margaret, editor. New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent. Oxford, 2019.
Cuder-Dominguez, Pilar. “Double Consciousness in the Work of Helen Oyeyemi and Diana Evans.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 2008, pp. 276-86.
—. “Black Disability and Diasporic Haunting in Diana Evans’ The Wonder.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, 2022: pp. 247-266.
Danaher, Katie. “Belonging and Un-Belonging in London: Representations of Home in Diana Evans’ 26a.” Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City, edited by Magali Cornier Michael, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 131-154.
Evans, Diana. 26a. Chatto & Windus, 2005.
—. Ordinary People. Chatto & Windus, 2018.
—. The Wonder. Chatto & Windus, 2009.
—. A House for Alice. Chatto & Windus, 2023.
—. I Want to Talk to You: And Other Conversations. Chatto & Windus, forthcoming.
—. “The Books that Made Me.” Black Britain: Beyond Definition. Spec. issue of Wasafiri 64 (2010): 35-37.
—. “Diana Evans: ‘The Tory Rhetoric Asks Us to Forget, I’m Trying to Make Sure That We Don’t.” Interview with Sara Collins, The Guardian, 25 March 2023.
—. “Diana Evans in Conversation.” Interview with Bernadine Evaristo, Wasafiri, vol. 20, no. 45, 2008: pp. 31-35.
Narain, Denise DeCaires. “Authoring Selfhood: Experiments in Self-Making in Jamaica Kincaid, Dionne Brand and Diana Evans.” Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women’s Writing: Race and Innovation, edited by Sheldon George andJean Wyatt, Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, n.p.
Newland, Courttia and George, Khadija, editors. IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, Hamish Hamilton, 2000.
Pérez Fernández, Irene. “Embodying ‘Twoness in Oneness’ in Diana Evans’s 26a." Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 49, no.3, 2012, pp. 1-12.
Reive Holland, Samantha. ““Home Had a Way of Shifting”: Cosmopolitan Belonging in Diana Evans’ 26a.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 53, no. 5, 2017: pp. 555-566.
Scafe, Suzanne. "Diana Evans’ 26a and The Wonder: Space, Place and Affect." Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’, edited by Misrahi-Barak, Judith, David Howard, Thomas Lacroix and Sally Barbour, Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranée, 2015, pp 115-134.
—. “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.
Vogt-William, Christine. “Meeting Mr. Hyde and Dr. Stone: Mixed Race Twins and White Fathers in Contemporary Diasporic Novels.” Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’, Vol. 2 Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy, edited by Sarah Barbour, Thomas Lacroix, David Howard & Judith Misrahi-Barak. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2015, pp. 135-154.
