Evaristo was born in Eltham, south-east London, and christened Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo.[13] She was raised in Woolwich, the fourth of eight children born to an English mother, Jacqueline M. Brinkworth, of English, Irish and German heritage,[14] who was a schoolteacher,[15] 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.[16] Her paternal grandfather, Gregorio Bankole Evaristo (d. 1927), was a YorubaAguda who sailed from Brazil to Nigeria. He was a customs officer. Her paternal grandmother, Zenobia Evaristo, née Sowemima (d. 1967), was from Abeokuta in Nigeria.[17][18][19][20]
Evaristo was educated at Eltham Hill Grammar School for Girls from 1970 to 1977,[21] and in 1972 she joined Greenwich Young People's Theatre (now Tramshed, in Woolwich), about which she has said: "I was twelve years old and it was the making of my childhood and led to a life-long career spent in the arts."[22] She went on to attend Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1982.[23]
In the 1980s, together with Paulette Randall and Patricia Hilaire, she founded Theatre of Black Women,[9] 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.[24]
Evaristo continued further education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, receiving her doctorate in creative writing in 2013.[25] 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.[26] In 2022, she was awarded the "Freedom of the Borough of the Royal Borough of Greenwich".[27]
Writing
Evaristo speaking at an event.
Evaristo's first book to be published was a 1994 collection of poems called Island of Abraham (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press).[28] She went on to become the author of two non-fiction books, and eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora.[29] She experiments with form and narrative perspective,[29] 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).[30] 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.[31] It won an Arts Council Writers' Award 2000, a NESTA Fellowship Award in 2003, and went on to be chosen by The Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade in 2010,[32] and it was adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play in 2013.[33] Evaristo's fourth book, Soul Tourists (Penguin, 2005), is an experimental novel about a mismatched couple driving across Europe to the Middle East, which featured ghosts of real figures of colour from European history.[34][35]
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 London childhood in a mixed-race family.[39] This won the EMMA Best Novel Award in 1998.[20] 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.[40]
Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other (May 2019, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK) is an innovative polyvocal "fusion fiction"[45] 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 selected for the Booker Prize longlist,[46] then made the shortlist, announced on 3 September 2019, alongside books by Margaret Atwood, Lucy Ellmann, Chigozie Obioma, Salman Rushdie and Elif Shafak.[47][48] On 14 October, Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize jointly with Atwood's The Testaments.[49][50] The win made Evaristo the first black woman and first Black British author to win the prize.[3][4][50][51][52]Girl, Woman, Other was one of Barack Obama's 19 Favourite Books of 2019 and Roxane Gay's Favourite Book of 2019.[53][54][55] The novel was also shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.[56]
In 2020, Evaristo won the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year,[57] the Indie Book Award for Fiction.[58] In June 2020, Evaristo became the first black woman and first Black British writer to reach number one in the UK paperback fiction charts,[59] where she held the top spot for five weeks and spent 44 weeks in the Top 10.[60]
Evaristo has been included on the Black Powerlist 100 for four years since 2020, which recognised the United Kingdom's most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage.[61] In 2020 she was included in the one-off, 100 Great Black Britons list.
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,[63] 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. In 2020 Evaristo collaborated with Valentino on their Collezione Milano collection, writing poetic text to accompany photographs of the collection by the photographer Liz Johnson Artur, published as a coffee-table book (Rizzoli, 2021).[64]
Evaristo guest-edited The Sunday TimesStyle magazine (UK) in July 2020 with a black-woman/-xn takeover, featuring an array of young artists, activists and change-makers.[69] A few years earlier, she was the guest editor of the September 2014 issue of Mslexia magazine,[70] 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,[71] 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). Evaristo was also editor of FrontSeat intercultural magazine in the 1990s,[38] 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),[4] Britain's first such substantial anthology, featuring among its 20 poets Jackie Kay, Dorothea Smartt and Adjoa Andoh.[72]
In October 2020, it was announced that Evaristo 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.[73]
Media appearances
Evaristo has been the subject of two major arts television documentary series: The South Bank Show, with Melvyn Bragg (Sky Arts, Autumn 2020)[74][75] and Imagine, with Alan Yentob ("Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up", BBC One, September 2021).[76][77] She has given many other interviews, including for HARDtalk, with Stephen Shakur (BBC World, 2020) and This Cultural Life, with John Wilson (BBC4, November 2021). She was also the subject of Profile (BBC Radio 4, 2019) and Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, interviewed by Lauren Laverne, in 2020.[78][79] In 2015, Evaristo wrote and presented a two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary called Fiery Inspiration: Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement.[44]
In the two months following her win of the Booker Prize, Evaristo has written that she received more invitations to give interviews than in the entirety of her career.[67]
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.[16] She chaired the 32nd and 33rd British Council Berlin Literature Seminar in 2017 and 2018. She delivered the New Statesman/Goldsmiths Prize lecture on 30 September 2020.[82][83] 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."[84]
In 2006, Evaristo initiated an Arts Council-funded report delivered by Spread the Word writer development agency into why black[87] 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.[24]
When the report was published, she then initiated The Complete Works mentoring scheme, with Nathalie Teitler and Spread the Word.[7] In this national development programme,[88] 30 poets were mentored, each over a one- or two-year period, and many went on to publish books, win awards and receive serious recognition for their poetry.[89][90]
Evaristo has also served on 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.[94][16] 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 hold the position in the Society's 200-year history,[95] 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."[11][96] As a Sky Arts Ambassador, Evaristo spearheaded the Sky Arts RSL Writers Awards, providing mentoring for under-represented writers.[97]
2011: "I Think I'm Going Slightly Mad" in One for the Trouble, The Book Slam Annual, edited by Patrick Neate (Book Slam Productions)[171]
2014: "Our Billy, (or should it be Betty?)" in Letter to an Unknown Soldier, 14–18 NOW UK WW1 Centenary Art Commissions (William Collins/HarperCollins)[172]
2015: "Yoruba Man Walking" in Closure: a new anthology of contemporary black British fiction, edited by Jacob Ross (Peepal Tree Press)[173]
2016: "The Human World" in How Much the Heart Can Hold, edited by Emma Herdman (Hodder & Stoughton)[174]
2007: "Writing the Past: Traditions, Inheritances, Discoveries" in Writing Worlds 1: The Norwich Exchanges (University of East Anglia/Pen & Inc Press)[180]
2009: Autobiographical essay, Contemporary Writers, Vol. 275 (Gale Publishing, USA)
2009: Autobiographical essay, "My Father's House" (Five Dials)[182]
2010: Introduction to Ten poetry anthology, "Why This, Why Now?", on the need for The Complete Works initiative to diversify British poetry publications (Bloodaxe Books)[183]
2010: Introduction to Wasafiri Black Britain: Beyond Definition, "The Illusion of Inclusion", Issue 64, Winter 2010 (Routledge)[184][185]
2010: "The Month of September", on writing and process, Volume 100:4, Winter 2010 Poetry Review[186]
2011: "Myth, Motivation, Magic & Mechanics", Body of Work: 40 Years of Creative Writing at UEA (University of East Anglia), edited by Giles Foden (Full Circle Editions)
2016: "The Privilege of Being a Mixed Race Woman", Tangled Roots: Real Life Stories from Mixed Race Britain, Anthology Number 2, edited by Katy Massey (Tangled Roots)
2020: "Literature Can Foster Our Shared Humanity", British Vogue, 6 June 2020.[195]
2020: "Loving the Body Fat-tastic", for A Point of View, BBC Radio 4[196]
2020: "On Mrs Dalloway", BBC Radio 4
2020: "Spiritual Pick and Mix", for A Point of View, BBC Radio 4[197]
2020: "The Longform Patriarchs and their Accomplices", New Statesman[198]
2020: "The Pro-Mask Movement", for A Point of View, BBC Radio 4[199]
2020: "Theatre of Black Women: A Personal Account", in The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage, edited by Jan Sewell and Clare Smout (Palgrave Macmillan)[200]
2020: "Why Black Lives Matter", for A Point of View, BBC Radio 4[201]
2021: Introduction to Bernard and the Cloth Monkey by Judith Bryan (1998), "Black Britain: Writing Back" series (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin reissue)[203][204]
2010: Editor, with Daljit Nagra, Ten: New Poets poetry anthology, introducing ten new poets from The Complete Works project (Bloodaxe Books)[217]
2010: Guest editor, with Karen McCarthy Woolf, Wasafiri, Black Britain: Beyond Definition, Special Winter Issue (Routledge)[218][29][219]
2012: Guest editor, Poetry Review, Offending Frequencies for The Poetry Society of Great Britain, Special Centenary Winter Issue, Volume 102.4[220]
2014: Editorial Selector, the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize anthology, Let's Tell This Story Properly, edited by Ellah Allfrey (Dundern Press, Canada)
2014: Guest editor, Mslexia quarterly magazine of creative writing, Issue Number 63[221]
2014–2020, Originator and supervising editor of annual student anthologies at Brunel University London: The Voices Inside Our Heads, The Psyche Supermarket, The Imagination Project, It's Complicated, Totem, Pendulum and Letter to My Younger Self 2019, Kintsugi[222]
↑ "How quickly & casually they have removed my name from history – the first black woman to win it. This is what we’ve always been up against, folks."[2]
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↑ Greenwich, Royal Borough of. "Freedom of the Borough". www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 25 October 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
↑ (in Italian) Caponi, Paolo. "Ester Gendusa, Identità nere e cultura europea. La narrativa di Bernardine Evaristo", In: Altre Modernità, Vol. 0, Iss. 14, pp. 211–213 (2015).
↑ "Winners 2020". GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards. Asian Media Group. 12 February 2022. Archived from the original on 24 August 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
↑ Evaristo, Bernardine (9 August 2020). "Gender in the Blender". A Point of View. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 8 December 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
↑ Evaristo, Bernardine (29 November 2020). "Loving the Body Fat-tastic". A Point of View. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
↑ Evaristo, Bernardine (27 December 2020). "Spiritual Pick and Mix". A Point of View. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 24 December 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
↑ Evaristo, Bernardine (2 October 2020). "The Pro-Mask Movement". A Point of View. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 1 November 2023. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
↑ Evaristo, Bernardine (5 July 2020). "Why Black Lives Matter". A Point of View. BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 5 October 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
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