Bernardine Evaristo

British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of seven books, including her new novel, Mr. Loverman, about a 74 yr old Caribbean London man who is closet homosexual (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2013 & Akashic USA, 2014). Her writing is characterized by experimentation, daring, subversion, and challenging the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities. 

Her books range in genre from poetry, verse-novels, a novel-with-verse, a novella, short stories, prose novels, radio and theatre drama, and literary essays and criticism. Her eighth book will be a collection of her short stories, published in Italian by Carocci in 2015. The first monograph on her work, Fiction Unbound by Sebnem Toplu, was published in August 2011 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The second will be published by Carocci in 2015.

Her awards include the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, EMMA Best Book Award, Big Red Read, Orange Youth Panel Award, NESTA Fellowship Award, and Arts Council Writer's Award. Her books have been a Best Book of the Year 13 times in British newspapers and magazines, and The Emperor's Babe was a Times 'Book of the Decade.' 

Hello, Mum has been chosen as one of the twenty titles for World Book Night in 2014. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, and she received an MBE in 2009. She has edited and guest-edited several publications. 

She is the co-editor of two recent anthologies and a special issue of Wasafiri magazine: Black Britain: Beyond Definition, which celebrated and reevaluated the black writing scene in Britain. In 2012 she was Guest Editor of the winter issue of Poetry Review, Britain's leading poetry journal, in its centenary year. 

Her issue, Offending Frequencies, featured more poets of color than had ever previously been published in a single issue of the journal, as well as many females, radical, experimental, and outspoken voices

She is also a literary critic for national newspapers such as the Guardian and Independent. She has judged many literary awards, including the National Poetry Competition, TS Eliot Prize, Orange First Novel Award, and the Next Generation Poet's List. In 2012 she was Chair of the Caine Prize for African Fiction and Chair of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize. 

That year she also founded the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. She is Reader in Creative Writing at Brunel University and designed and teaches the annual six-month Guardian¬-University of East Anglia 'How to Tell a Story' fiction course in London. 

She has toured widely in the UK, and since 1997 she has accepted invitations to participate in over 100 international visits as a writer. She gives readings and delivers talks, keynotes, workshops, and courses, and she has held visiting fellowships and professorships.

Bernardine Evaristo was born in Woolwich, southeast London, the fourth of eight children to an English mother and Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and local Labour councilor, and her mother was a schoolteacher. She was educated at Eltham Hill Girls Grammar School, the Rose Bruford College of Speech & Drama, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where she earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing. She spent her teenage years acting at Greenwich Young People's Theatre. She lives in London with her husband.