Evaristo, Bernardine

Bernardine Evaristo was born in London to a Nigerian father and an English mother. She trained as an actress and cofounded a theater company for which she wrote plays and acted. She has won numerous writing awards for prose and poetry, including the EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards) Best Book Award for her novel Lara. She has held writing fellowships at the University of East Anglia and Barnard College.