British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of six books and the co-editor of two anthologies and a special issue of Wasafiri magazine.

She was born in Woolwich, south east London, the fourth of eight children, to an English mother and Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and her mother a schoolteacher. She was educated at Eltham Hill Girls Grammar School and the Rose Bruford College of Speech & Drama, and spent her teenage years acting at Greenwich Young People’s Theatre.

Her six books range in genre from poetry, verse-novels, a novel-with-verse, a novella and a fully prose novel. She also reviews books for the national newspapers, has written drama and fiction for BBC Radio 4, co-edited two anthologies, teaches creative writing at universities and for other organisations, judges literary awards and has undertaken over 70 international trips and tours as a writer giving readings, workshops, courses and on visiting professorships. She supports other writers through individual mentoring and initiated the Free Verse report (2005) and The Complete Works project (2008-2010), both with Spread the Word, to develop poets of colour in the UK. (See below for more on this.)

The first monograph on her work, Fiction Unbound by Sebnem Toplu, was published in August 2011 by Cambridge Scholars Press.

She has received several awards for her books, which have been a ‘Book of the Year’ in British newspapers and magazines 12 times, and The Emperor’s Babe was a Times ‘Book of the Decade’ in 2009. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, and she was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2009. For fuller details on the author scroll down and visit the other headings.

Her books include:  HELLO MUM (Penguin 2010), LARA (Bloodaxe 2009), BlONDE ROOTS (Penguin 2008), SOUL TOURISTS (Penguin 2005), THE EMPEROR’S BABE (Penguin 2001), the first version of LARA (ARP 1997), ISLAND OF ABRAHAM (Peepal Tree, 1994).

Bernardine’s novella HELLO MUM was published by Penguin in 2010. The narrator is Jerome, a fourteen year old boy living in London, and it’s written in the form of a letter to his mother. We come to understand how he feels about her, his home, his school, his peer group, society-at-large and the events that lead up to a major incident.

Bernardine was the Suffolk Big Read author in 2010 and 40,000 copies of Hello Mum were distributed throughout the county including to every school.

LARA, a verse novel (Bloodaxe Books 2009) is based on her family history and spans 150 years, seven generations and multiple characters from five countries of origin: England, Nigeria, Ireland, Germany and Brazil. (Originally published in 1997, this edition has been revised and expanded by a third.)

Her first fully-prose novel BLONDE ROOTS* (Penguin UK 2008/USA 2009) is a slavery story with a difference: in this novel Africans enslave Europeans. The protagonist is a white woman from Europa who lives out her adult life as a slave in the New World. Satirical and subversive, it offers a fresh perspective on slavery.

*Available as an unabridged audio book. Published by Whole Story Audio Books.
(See under Audio.)

Her novel-with-verse SOUL TOURISTS (Penguin 2005) uses poetry, prose, and more experimental techniques. It is both a car journey across Europe in the late 80s as well as a journey into black European history. The novel features many ghosts of colour from Europe’s history including Pushkin, Alessandro dei Medici, Mary Seacole, Hannibal and the Chevalier de St.Georges.

Her novel-in-verse THE EMPEROR’S BABE (Penguin 2001) is the tragi-comic tale of a young girl of Sudanese parents who grows up in Roman London 1800 years ago.

She is co-edtor with poet Daljit Nagra of the poetry anthology TEN in 2010 (Bloodaxe Books) and and co-editor of the British Council annual writing anthology NW15: New Writing 15, (Granta) with novelist Maggie Gee in 2007.

See BOOKS

Awards & Honours

The Emperor’s Babe was chosen as one of the Times’
‘100 Best Books of the Decade’ in November 2009

2010 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award fiction shortlist
2010 PBS  Special Commendation for TEN poetry anthology of 10 new poets (co-editor)
2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (nominated/longlist)
2009 The Big Red Read Award: fiction & overall winner
2009 Awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.*
2009 Winner, Orange Prize Youth Panel
2009 Orange Prize for Fiction (longlist)
2006 Elected a Fellow, Royal Society of Arts
2004 Elected a Fellow, Royal Society of Literature
2003 NESTA Fellowship Award*
2000 Arts Council Writers Award
1999 BT EMMA Best Book Award

*Member of the Order of the British Empire: part of the UK honours system. Bernardine’s MBE is for being ‘a major voice in the multicultural panorama of British literature’.

*National Endowment of Science, Technology & The Arts (UK)

Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists, The Emperor’s Babe and Lara have together acquired Books of the Year honours 12 times in British newspapers and magazines including in The Times, Financial Times, New Statesman,Telegraph, Independent, Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman. See LAURELS

Blonde Roots was recently chosen as one of the Best Books of 2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Other Writing
Bernardine has written for radio and theatre. Her radio play Madame Bitterfly and The Stockwell Diva was broadcast as the Friday play on BBC Radio 4, (2003 & 2006), and she was co-writer of the theatre production Mapping the Edge, produced by WilsonWilson Company in partnership with Sheffield Crucifield Theatre (2002), with writers Alison Fell & Amanda Dalton. This was also broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Other creative work includes a collaboration with saxophonist Andy Sheppard and pianist Joanna MacGregor on Cityscapes (2003) for the City of London Festival, a multi-media, poetry/music/video performance at St. Bartholomew’s thousand year-old church at Smithfields.

She writes occasional book reviews for The Guardian, Times, Independent and Finanical Times newspapers. She also writes essays and wrote the introduction to contemporary poetry for the British Council’s website.

From 2006-2009 Bernardine wrote an eight-part column offering tips on writing fiction and poetry for Mslexia Magazine.

Bernardine’s poem Routes is on permanent display (engraved into glass) in the Museum of London in the ‘London Before London’ gallery.

She  co-edited, with Karen McCarthy Woolf, the Black British issue of Wasafiri in 2011, entitled: Black Britain – Beyond Definition.

In 2007 she was commissoned to write a text for one of Arts Council England’s Oyster (travel) card holders, celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Bernardine has been profiled in several television programmes internationally, most recently in two for Deutche Welle, and her writing is translated into Czech, Italian, Finnish and Mandarin. She represented Britain on the Literaturexpress Europa 2000 Tour, which took 105 European writers through 11 European countries over 6 weeks by train, travelling from Portugal to Berlin via Belgium, the Baltics and Russia.

She tours the UK on an ongoing basis as a writer and she has also completed over 70 international writers tours, trips and residencies since 1997: giving readings from her books, delivering talks and papers, taking part in seminars & debates, teaching creative writing. (See TOURS)

Creative Writing Teaching & Fellowships (Also, see TEACHING)

Selected teaching residencies and workshops:

Reader in Creative Writing, Brunel University (Autumn 2011)

Ongoing: A creative writing Fellow @ Oxford Brookes University, MA Creative Writing.

2008-2010: A visiting tutor on the Creative & Life Writing MA, Goldsmith’s College, University of London.

  • British Council Writer-in-Residence, Virginia, USA (2007)
  • British Council, Morocco (2005)
  • British Council Writer-in-Residence, Georgetown Uni,Washington DC (2005)
  • MA Creative Writing, City Uni., London, 2004
  • British Council, Egypt (Young writers),2004
  • British Council, Libya (Women writers), 2004
  • Writing Fellow, University of East Anglia,UK, 2002
  • Visiting Prof.Barnard Coll/Columbia Uni, NY, 2002
  • University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, 2000
  • British Council, Zimbabwe (Women writers), 1999

And she has taught many week-long creative writing workshops for the Arvon Foundation (UK) with co-tutors such as Jacob Ross, Helen Dunmore, Elizabeth Alexander, Tobias Hill, Patrick Neate, Stephen Knight, Nii Parkes, Luke Wright and Michael Donaghy.

Advisory

  • 2007-9 Management Committee, Society of Authors
  • 2005- Advis. Cttees: Free Verse & The Complete Works/STW
  • 2004-8 Advisory Committee, Museum of London
  • 2004-9 Advisory Board, MA Creative Writing, City Uni.
  • 2003-6 Literature Advisor, British Council
  • 2001-5 Special Advisor, Arts Council London (Literature) (LAB)
  • 2001-4 General Council, The Poetry Society of Great Britain
    2003-4 Acting Chair, The Poetry Society of Great Britain
  • 2000 – Contributing Editor, Wasafiri Literature Journal

Bernardine has judged several literary awards:

2012  Chair of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize
2011  Peacock Poetry Prize (Brighton Festival)
2010 TS Eliot Prize (Poetry)
2010 Alfred Fagan Award – (Black plays)
2010 Orange Award for New Writers (Women’s fiction)
2009 Muslim Writers Awards with Penguin Publishers (Fiction)
2008 Decibel Penguin Prize (Fiction)
2007 Northern Rock Writers’ Award  (Fiction & Poetry)
2006 The National Poetry Competition
2004 The Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation List
1997 Ian St. James’ Award (Fiction)

COMMUNITY

Summer 2009 Bernardine became a Patron of Westminster Befriend A Family, a twenty-year old organisation founded in 1989 that offers support services for families living in Westminster with at least one child under the age of 14. The organisation also works with families who are homeless and with refugees and asylum seekers. They now work with over 750 people per year, 350 of whom are young people and 400 of whom are parents.

From 1995-1999 she was Director of Spread the Word Literature Development Agency with Ruth Borthwick, London’s premier agency of its kind, committed to providing a wide range of top-quality creative writing workshops, courses and conferences, especially aimed at social groups under-represented in literature.

Bernardine initiated Free Verse (2006), a report into the lack of publishing opportunities for poets of colour in the UK, commissioned by Arts Council London and produced by Spread the Word.

This was followed up with The Complete Works, also with Spread the Word and currently underway. It is a two-year development programme to support and mentor poets of colour to make inroads into completing a first or second collection of poetry (2008-2010).

Bernardine has also mentored several writers working on their first novels or first poetry collections.

Personal
Bernardine lives in London with her husband.