Personality of the Week - 27th June to 3rd July 2011

BERNARDINE EVARISTO

Bernardine Evaristo MBE FRSL FRSA is a British author. She was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian Father and was raised inWoolwich, south east London. She is the author of six books including a verse novel Lara, based on her family history with roots in England, Nigeria, Ireland, Germany and Brazil, published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2009. It is a revised and expanded (by a third) version of an earlier edition of the book.

A Quick Reads novella Hello Mum, about teenage knife crime, was published in 2010. In Blonde Roots, her first prose novel, she created a fictional world where Africans enslave Europeans. It was published by Penguin UK 2008 and Penguin USA, 2009. 'Soul Tourists, a novel which fuses poetry and prose fiction, is about two people, Stanley and Jessie, driving across Europe in the late Eighties. En route Stanley encounters many ghosts of colour from European history including Pushkin, Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady of the Sonnets', Mary Seacole, the Chevalier de St. George and Alessandro dei Medici. Published by Penguin, 2005, The Emperor's Babe is a verse novel about A black girl called Zuleika who grows up in Roman London nearly 2000 years ago. Published by Penguin, 2001.

She co-edited the anthology of Black and Asian poets called Ten for Bloodaxe Books with poet Daljit Nagra that came out in September 2010. This is part of The Complete Works project. She has co-edited with poet Karen McCarthy a special issue of "Wasafiri" (international contemporary literature magazine), for which she is an associate editor. This issue is called "Black Britain: Beyond Definition" and it is published in December 2010. And she co-edited the Granta/British Council New Writing Anthology NW15 in 2007 with the novelist Maggie Gee.

Evaristo writes book reviews for The Times, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times newspapers. Evaristo has also written for theatre, magazines and drama and fiction for BBC Radio 4. She has held many writing fellowships and residencies such as at Georgetown University, Washington DC; Barnard College/Columbia University, NewYork; University of the Western Cape, South Africa; the Virginia Arts Festival and the University of East Anglia, UK. Since 1997 she has been on seventy international writing tours which involve writer-residencies and fellowships, book tours, teaching creative writing workshops as well as conference and literary festival appearances.

She is currently a visiting tutor at Goldsmith's College, University of London, and a Creative Writing Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. In 2006 Bernardine Evaristo initiated an Arts Council report into why black and Asian poets were not getting published in the UK. When the report was published she initiated a poets' mentoring scheme called 'The Complete Works' (TCW) with Spread the Word literature development agency. TCWis currently in its first year with 10 poets on the programme. In 2009 Bernardine became a patron of Westminster Befriend A Family, a long-standing voluntary organisation that works with disadvantaged families in Westminster.

She lives in London with her husband.

Honours and Awards

Her awards and honours include the EMMA Best Book Award, Arts Council Writers Award, a NESTA Fellowship Award, Blonde Roots was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the inaugural Orange Prize Youth Panel and the Big Red Read Award - both in 2009. Blonde Roots is also currently on the longlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In November 2009 The Emperor's Babe was selected by the Times newspaper (UK) as one of the '100 Best Books of the Decade'.

Bernardine Evaristo was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, and she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

2010 The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (nominee - current) USA
2010 Poetry Book Society Commendation for poetry anthology 'Ten', co-ed with Daljit Nagra
2009 International IMPACDublin LiteraryAward (nominated / longlist)
2009 Big Red Read Award (Fiction and overall winner)
2009 Awarded an MBE in Queen's Birthday Honours List
2009 Winner, Orange Prize Youth Panel Award
2009 Orange Prize for Fiction (longlist)
2006 Elected a Fellow, Royal Society of Arts
2004 Elected a Fellow, Royal Society of Literature
2003 NESTA Fellowship Award
2000 Arts CouncilWriters Award
1999 BT EMMA Best Book Award

Evaristo's books have been "A Book of the Year" nine times for British newspapers. The Emperor's Babe was on the 'Times' '100 Best Books of the Decade' list in November 2009.

"Hello Mum", a novella (Penguin UK, 2010)
"Lara" - new, expanded version (Bloodaxe Books, 2009)
Blonde Roots (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2008 & Riverhead/Penguin, USA in 2009)
Soul Tourists (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2005)
The Emperor's Babe (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2001)
Lara (Angela Royal Publishing, 1997)

Sources include Wikipedia and Metro.