My Creative Life

"I became an overnight success after 40 years of writing." Ms Evaristo in 2019

At Home, London, UK, June 2025

A little background info. My immigrant Nigerian father arrived in Britain in 1949 and married my white, English mother and proceeded to have eight kids in ten years. They had no money, no support system, and massive opposition to their marriage from my mother’s side of the family. My father was a welder in a factory and my mother a schoolteacher. His Brazilian father had died before he was born in the 1920s and his mother was an illiterate market trader. My mother had Irish and German heritage. Her father was a milkman and her mother a dressmaker. We lived in a big rundown house, had no money and were targeted by racists - it was the 60s and 70s! All of this has shaped who I am today.

Fast forward a few centuries and I’m now the author of ten books and numerous other works in different genres such as drama, essays, poetry, short fiction. I began my professional career in theatre in 1982 - writer, actor, producer - and published my first book in 1994. My big breakthrough came when I won the Booker Prize 2019 with my eighth book, the novel, Girl, Woman, Other, which made me the first black woman and black British person to win it in its fifty-year history. It came nearly 40 years after I’d started writing professionally and the Prize changed the trajectory of my career. Girl, Woman, Other became a #1 UK Sunday Times bestseller for five weeks and spent 44 weeks in the Top 10. It's been a global bestseller and there are now nearly 40 translations of this and my other books. I still can’t believe my good fortune these past few years since this big win.

In 2021, I published my first memoir is Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (2021) and the short book, Look Again: Feminism (2021), which is part of Tate Britain's 'Look Again' series.

My other novels include Blonde Roots, Lara, The Emperor’s Babe and Mr Loverman, which became an 8-part Fable Pictures/Sony/BBC One drama mini-series in 2024 (now on BBC iPlayer). Adapted by Nathaniel Price, it won two BAFTAS in 2025. (Via BritBox USA/ Binge (Australia)

In 2025, I received the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, a one-off literary honour marking 30 years of the Women's Prize. This award was created “for a living female writer in recognition of her body of work, her significant contribution to literature, and her strong advocacy for women. Authors who had been previously longlisted, shortlisted or won the Women’s Prize for Fiction over the past three decades, and had published a minimum of five books, were eligible for the award”. Judged by a jury of five women, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed to be anounced the recipient of such an award.

As a long-time literary advocate and practical activist, I’ve initiated many inclusion projects designed to increase representation in the arts for talented writers. These include the Complete Works Poetry Mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007-2017), the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012-2022); now renamed the Evaristo African Poetry Prize and produced by the African Poetry Book Fund at Brown University; the Royal Society of Literature/Sky Arts mentoring scheme (2021, 2022) and most recently, the RSL Scriptorium Awards (2025-) -seaside writing retreat. For a two-year period from 2023-2024, I was the Literature Mentor for the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Initiative. I also co-founded Theatre of Black Women (1982-88), Britain’s first such theatre company, and co-founded Spread the Word, London's writer's development agency (1995 -). Since 2020 I’ve been the curator of a new initiative, Black Britain: Writing Back for Hamish-Hamilton-Penguin Random House (my publisher since 2001) re-publishing books from the past – thirteen to date.

I also deliver many talks, keynotes and lectures, and frequently accept invitations to appear at international festivals and events.

I’ve chaired and judged about 46 literary prizes (yes, I counted recently!) and I feel deeply appreciative to have received a considerable number of awards, honours and nominations for my own work, including the British Book Award’s Fiction Book of the Year & Author of the Year (2020), and my books have been on many Book of the Year lists. I’ve also received three teaching awards at Brunel University of London, where I am Professor of Creative Writing. I studied acting and theatre making at Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance, and many decades later earned my PhD studying at Goldsmiths, University of London.

I am the current President of the Royal Society of Literature (2022-2025). I am the second woman to hold this role and the first person of colour in 200 years, and the first person who did not attend Oxford, Cambridge or Eton. Why is it important to always make these points? Because it acknowledges the wider context about historical barriers and social change.

You can read more about my life and creativity in my memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Penguin, 2021), or visit my website. www.bevaristo.com

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