Honorary Patronage of Bernardine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo is a British fiction author. Her most recent novel, "Girl, Woman, Other", won the Booker Prize in 2019, the first black woman and the first black British person to win it. In 2020 she became the first woman of colour to reach number 1 on the UK paperback charts.
Evaristo has had a lifelong commitment to the arts and to activism. Her love affair with the arts began as a young girl in Greenwich Young People’s Theatre. She worked as an actor for a number of years and co-founded Theatre of Black Women in 1982.
Her love for the arts continued to grow and take new forms - she is an accomplished literary critic and professor and is the current vice-chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She has, throughout her academic and creative work, championed the rights of minority racial and ethnic groups, LGBT people, and women. She has been a strong advocate for the inclusion of writers and artists of colour in particular - by founding the Brunel University African Poetry Prize and The complete Works poetry development scheme, among others.
She is of course most well-known for her eight works of fiction which explore the experiences of the African diaspora.
It was an honour to welcome Bernardine Evaristo to the Phil in October 2020.