Bernardine Evaristo

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About 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 characterised 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 by 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 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.
Her books are: MR LOVERMAN (Penguin, 2013), 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). For more information visit BOOKS. Her verse novel The Emperor's Babe was adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play in 2013 and her novella Hello Mum was broadcast as a Radio 4 play in 2012. Her writing - essays, articles and non-fiction - has appeared in many publications.
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 colour than had ever previously been published in a single issue of the journal, as well as many female, radical, experimental and outspoken voices.
She is also a literary critic for the national newspapers such as the Guardian and Independent and 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 anuual 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 take part 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, south east London, the fourth of eight children, to an English mother and Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and local Labour councillor and her mother 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 PhD in Creative Writing. She spent her teenage years acting at Greenwich Young People's Theatre. She lives in London with her husband.
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Books By Bernardine Evaristo
Catch up on the literary sensation of the year with Booker Prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other
BRITISH BOOK AWARDS AUTHOR & FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER
'The most absorbing book I read all year.' Roxane Gay
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This is Britain as you've never read it.
This is Britain as it has never been told.
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .
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'[Bernardine Evaristo] is one of the very best that we have' Nikesh Shukla on Twitter
'A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle
'Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity' Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter
'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith, author of How to be both
'Exceptional. You have to order it right now' Stylist
'Sparkling, inventive' Sunday Times
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
'Evaristo possesses enough ball-busting originality to create whole novels for each of the historical characters she resurrects . . . [she creates] funky yarns so tantalising you want to devour them' Guardian
Meet Stanley Williams: Single, in his thirties, grieving the death of his Jamaican father and wondering if there is more to life than his nine-to-five banking job in a sky-high glass menagerie.
Enter Jessie O'Donnell: barmaid, former singer-cum-comedienne, and desperate to get into her rusty old Lady Niva and hit the freeway across Europe.
The unlikely pair begin an electrifying odyssey that weaves in and out of history, colliding with the forgotten heroes of Europe's past. Shakespeare's mysterious 'Dark Lady of the Sonnet's, Pushkin and his Ethiopian great-grandfather and the mixed-race Allessandro de' Medici of Florence are all ready to have their voices heard, and Stanley and Jessie do what they can to hang on for the ride . . .
'A bouncy. . . touching novel about the search for love and belonging' The Times
Treat a loved one to this joyful, big-hearted read from Booker Prize-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo...
'[Mr Loverman is] Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people' Dawn French
WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2014 and FERRO GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBT FICTION 2015
Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris.
His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?
Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain's older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009
WINNER OF THE ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009
FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD 2010
'A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.' Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast
Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris, from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the hold of a slave-ship sailing to the New World . . .
In this fantastically imaginative inversion of the transatlantic slave trade - in which 'whytes' are enslaved by black people - Bernardine Evaristo has created a thought-provoking satire that is as accessible and readable as it is intelligent and insightful. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the society of today.
'A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual history. Evaristo keep[s] her wit and anger at a spicy simmer throughout' Daily Telegraph
'So human and real. Re-imagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence' Guardian
'A brilliant satire whose flashes of comedy make the underlying tragedy all the more poignant' Scotland on Sunday
'Promises to make for one of 2021's must-read memoirs' Stylist
The powerful, urgent manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine Evaristo.
In 2019, Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize since its inception fifty years earlier - a revolutionary landmark for Britain. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history.
Manifesto is her intimate and fearless account of how she did it. From a childhood steeped in racism from neighbours, priests and even some white members of her own family, to discovering the arts through her local youth theatre; from stuffing her belongings into bin bags, always on the move between temporary homes, to exploring many romantic partners both toxic and loving, male and female, and eventually finding her soulmate; from setting up Britain's first theatre company for Black women in the eighties to growing into the trailblazing writer, theatre-maker, teacher, mentor and activist we see today - Bernardine charts her rebellion against the mainstream and her life-long commitment to community and creativity. And, through the prism of her extraordinary experiences, she offers vital insights into the nature of race, class, feminism, sexuality and ageing in modern Britain.
Bernardine Evaristo's life story is a manifesto for courage, integrity, optimism, resourcefulness and tenacity. It's a manifesto for anyone who has ever stood on the margins, and anyone who wants to make their mark on history. It's a manifesto for being unstoppable.
'Bernardine Evaristo is one of those writers who should be read by everyone, everywhere' Elif Shafak
'Bernardine Evaristo is one of Britain's best writers, an iconic and unique voice, filled with warmth, subtlety and humanity. Exceptional' Nikesh Shukla
'Bernardine Evaristo is the most daring, imaginative and innovative of writers' Inua Ellams
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
WINNER OF THE NESTA FELLOWSHIP AWARD 2003
'Wildly entertaining, deeply affecting' Ali Smith, author of How to be both and Autumn
A coming-of-age tale to make the muses themselves roar with laughter and weep for pity -- sassy, razor-sharp and transformative.
Londinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. She's a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and she's just been married off a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts . . .
Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and verse, a joyful mash-up of today and yesterday. Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor's Babe asks what it means to be a woman and to survive in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
It's a hot summer afternoon. Tension is in the air. A gang of youths on bikes gathers outside a chip shop. A teenage boy is stabbed and left bleeding on the street.
The boy's mother wonders how this could have happened to her son. She is full of questions, but when the answers lie so close to home, are they really what she wants to hear?
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series, for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign language.
· Carefully adapted text.
· Accompanying audio with the print edition, accessed securely online.
· The series includes popular classics, bestselling modern fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction.
· The eight levels of Penguin Readers are mapped to the CEFR, and Lexile measured.
· Beautiful new illustrations for levels 2 to 6. Starter and level 1 titles in graphic novel format, for beginner learners.
· Language practice exercises in every book, additional activities and lesson plans online.
· Each book contains a glossary, with definitions of key vocabulary.
· A digital version accompanies the print edition, available securely online.
· Visit the Penguin Readers website for more information.
· Girl, Woman, Other, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework.
· The Level 7 longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future perfect simple, past perfect continuous, mixed conditionals, more complex passive forms and modals for deduction in the past.
Girl, Woman, Other is a powerful novel about race and the lives and journeys of twelve people. It celebrates the importance of coming together to share, love, and take care of each other.
Fifteen specially commissioned essays from distinguished authors explore the place of the writer, past and present, the value of critical thinking, and the power of the written word. Their work articulates ‘brave new words’ at the heart of battles against limitations on fundamental rights of citizenship, the closure of national borders, fake news, and an increasing reluctance to engage with critical democratic debate. Contributors include Eva Hoffman, Romesh Gunesekera, Githa Hariharan, James Kelman, Tabish Khair, Kei Miller, Blake Morrison, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Hsiao-Hung Pai, Olumide Popoola, Shivanee Ramlochan, Bina Shah, Raja Shehadeh and Marina Warner.
In Refugee Tales III we read the stories of people who have been through this process, many of whom have yet to see their cases resolved and who live in fear that at any moment they might be detained again. Poets, novelists and writers have once again collaborated with people who have experienced detention, their tales appearing alongside first-hand accounts by people who themselves have been detained. What we hear in these stories are the realities of the hostile environment, the human costs of a system that disregards rights, that denies freedoms and suspends lives.
‘We hear so many of the wrong words about refugees – ugly, limiting, unimaginative words – that it feels like a gift to find here so many of the right words which allow us to better understand the lives around us, and our own lives too.’ – Kamila Shamsie
'In sparse language we hear with a heart-wrenching immediacy and intimacy of brutalities and injustices of refugee life in Britain, but also of hope and optimism in the hardest circumstances.' - Kerry Hudson, The Big Issue
All profits go to the Gatwick Detainee Welfare Group and Kent Help for Refugees.