When Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize jointly with Margaret Atwood in 2019, at age 60, she gained international recognition as the first black woman to receive the prize. Although the judges’ decision to split the award sparked controversy, Evaristo considered it as “an entirely positive experience” (Hazell) as it helped to spread the word about her sixth novel,
Girl, Woman, Other, whose sales spiked in the week following the win and which received an accolade from Barack Obama on Twitter on 28 December 2019. Similarly, a BBC presenter’s failure to name Evaristo as the joint-winner contributed to the debate on the invisibility of black writers with Evaristo tweeting: “How quickly & casually they have removed my name from history – the first black woman to win it. This…
3019 words
Citation: Walezak, Emilie. "Bernardine Evaristo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 May 2022 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12240, accessed 21 November 2024.]
