Name: Bernadine Evaristo OBE
Title: Order of the British Empire (2020)
Born: 28 May 1959
Place of birth: Woolwich, Greenwich
Residency: UK
Known for: Writing and poetry
Awards: EMMA Best Novel Award (1999); Vanity Fair Challenger Award (2021); Glamour Women of the Year: Game-changing Author Award (2021); British Book Award: Authors of the Year (2020);
British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year (2020); Vice Chancellor’s Award for staff (2020) and more

Bernadine Evaristo is born to English and African parents. She is the fourth of eight siblings, and grew up in the London Borough of Greenwich.

Sources say that Bernadine started her career within an alternative arts movement. These Black British artists looked at ways to address the inequalities in mainstream theatre, and to give black women voices in theatre. Bernadine co-founded the Theatre of Black Woman with two of her fellow graduates.

Bernadine Evaristo is a writer and academic. Her works include poetry, essays, and fiction, she has written a total of 8 books. She is a professor of creative writing at Brunel University, and holds many fellowships and honours including Fellow of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, 2018, and Honorary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford University, 2020.

In recognition of her work Bernadine won the Booker Prize in 2019. This is noteworthy because Bernadine made history. She made history because she became the first BlackBritish woman to win the Booker Prize award. She won it for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. This book topped The Sunday Times best seller list at #1 for five weeks, and went on to win several other awards in 2020 including the British Book Award’s Author of the Year, Fiction Book of the Year, and the Indie Book Award for Fiction.

Bernadine also edits publications, and has curated Black Britain: Writing Back, a new book series, published earlier in 2021.