The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elected from among the best writers in any genre currently at work. Additionally, Honorary Fellows are chosen from those who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature, including publishers, agents, librarians, booksellers or producers. The society is a cultural tenant at London's Somerset House.
Lennie Michael James is a British actor. He is best known for portraying Morgan Jones in the AMC series The Walking Dead and in its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, and starring as DCI Tony Gates in Line of Duty series one.
Benjamin Myers FRSL is an English writer and journalist.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is an English author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. 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.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika FRSL is a British-Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and essays and an active member of the literary community, particularly supporting and amplifying young writers and female voices. She is the author of two well-received novels, In Dependence (2009) and Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), as well as the non-fiction collection Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora (2022), and her writing has appeared in publications including Granta, Transition, Guernica, and OZY, and previously served as founding Books Editor of OZY. Manyika's work also features in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Afua Hirsch FRSL is a British writer and broadcaster. She has worked as a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, and was the Social Affairs and Education Editor for Sky News from 2014 until 2017. She is the author of the 2018 book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, receiving a Jerwood Award while writing it. Hirsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Hong Khaou is a British film director and screenwriter. He is known for his feature film debut, Lilting (2014).
"Lover Man", or "Lover Man ", is a 1941 song made popular by Billie Holiday.
Lara is a semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse written by Bernardine Evaristo. It was originally published in 1997 by Angela Royal Publishing and won the EMMA Best Book Award in 1999. Drawing on family life, childhood and an inter-racial marriage, Lara explores the struggles of London living in the 1960s and '70s, travelling through seven generations of predecessors, spanning over 150 years to follow their lives in England, Nigeria, Ireland, Germany and Brazil. In 2009 a new, revised and expanded edition was published by Bloodaxe Books, with a photograph of the author's parents on their wedding day in Camberwell, London, 1955, as the cover.
The Emperor's Babe is a verse novel written by British author Bernardine Evaristo. Published by Penguin in 2001, it is Evaristo's second work of fiction. Based in London around 1800 years ago, it follows the story of black Nubian teenage girl, Zuleika, who comes of age in the Roman period. The Emperor's Babe won the Arts Council Writers Award in 2000, a NESTA Fellowship Award in 2003 and was chosen by The Times as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade in 2010. In 2013, it was also adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play.
Blonde Roots is a prose novel written by British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo. Published by Penguin UK in 2009 and Penguin USA in 2010, this satirical novel reverts notions of transatlantic slavery, placing Africans as masters of European slaves. In 2009, it was the Orange Prize Youth Panel Choice and the Big Red Read Award.
Irenosen Iseghohi Okojie FRSL is a Nigerian-born novelist and short-story writer working in London, England. Her stories incorporate speculative elements and also make use of her West African heritage. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask Award in 2016, and her story "Grace Jones" won the 2020 Caine Prize for African Writing. Okojie was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in 2018, and in 2020 was appointed a vice-chair of the RSL.
Girl, Woman, Other is the eighth novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments.
Queenie is a new adult novel written by British author Candice Carty-Williams and published by Trapeze, an imprint of Orion, in 2019. The novel is about the life and loves of Queenie Jenkins, a vibrant, troubled 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman who is not having a very good year. In 2023, Channel 4 announced that Queenie had been made into a television drama, created and executive produced by Carty-Williams which aired in June 2024.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a British-born Ghanaian poet.
Mr Loverman is a British TV series starring Lennie James based on the novel of the same name by Bernardine Evaristo.
