Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo was born in London to a Nigerian father and English mother, one of eight siblings, and developed a passion for theatre and writing from an early age, co-founding the Theatre of Black Women in 1982, one of Britain's first Black women's theatre companies.

Evaristo built a distinguished literary career over several decades, experimenting with verse novels and innovative narrative forms across works exploring Black British and diasporic identity, history and experience, gradually establishing a reputation as one of Britain's most inventive contemporary novelists.

In 2019, Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other — a genre-defying, polyphonic narrative following twelve interconnected characters, mostly Black British women, across generations — was awarded the Booker Prize, jointly with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. Evaristo became the first Black woman ever to win the prize in its more than fifty-year history.

The recognition transformed Evaristo's public profile after decades of critically respected but comparatively under-recognised work, and she has since become an outspoken advocate for greater diversity in British publishing, using her platform to highlight other Black British writers and push for structural change within the literary industry.