Book, Novel
Bernardine Evaristo
Since Winning the EMMA Award
Bernardine Evaristo OBE is an English Author and Academic whose 2019 novel “Girl, Woman, Other” made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019.
Bernardine won the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, alongside Author of the Year and the Indie Book Award. Bernardine became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020.
In 2021, Bernardine was the 151st honoree on The Bookseller’s Powerlist 150. In 2022, she made the Sky Arts’ list of ‘Britain’s 50 Most Influential Artists of the Past 50 Years’. Bernardine originally received an MBE in 2009 and an OBE in 2020, because of her services to literature.
Background (Before 1998)
Born in Eltham, South-East London, and christened as Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, who is an Anglo-Nigerian author of numerous books and writings that span the genres of fiction, verse fiction, short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama.
Bernardine studied drama at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance and gained a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since the beginning of her career, Bernardine has been committed to supporting writers and artists of colour.
Bernadine co-founded the Theatre of Black Women, the first company in the UK to be made up entirely of black women. In the 1990s, she organised the first major British conference on Black theatre and Black writing. Bernardine made her literary debut in 1994 by publishing the poetry collection Island of Abraham.
