Bernardine Evaristo, the first Black woman to win a Booker Prize, writes a memoir about how she “moved from the edges to the middle of the stage” over a career that has transcended three decades.
Evaristo’s Manifesto draws in depth on the award-winning author’s experiences to explore his “creative revolution against the mainstream and his lifelong commitment in imaginative study on ‘no story’ stories, said publisher Hamish Hamilton, who will release the fiction. title in October.
“Booker Bernardine Evaristo’s win in 2019 – the first for a Black woman – was a revolutionary time for British culture and for her,” said the publisher. Evaristo won the Booker in collaboration with Margaret Atwood in 2019 for her eighth novel Girl, Woman, Other. Her writing spans fiction, poetry fiction, poetry, drama, essays and literary criticism, and she is a professor of creative writing at Brunel University London, and vice-president of the Royal Literary Society.
“He’s been at work for a long time,” said the author of Manifesto. “I wanted to write a non-fiction book that looks at how my life and background and politics have influenced my creativity and brought me to this place in my career. It’s a great place, but it’s been a very long journey, over 40 years. This felt like the right time, having taken up this role as a writer, to reflect on how I got here. ”
Hamish Hamilton said the book, which he described as “Bernardine Evaristo’s manifesto without ever giving”, would “make a vital contribution to normal conversations on social issues such as race, class, feminism, sexuality and age”.
“I never entertained the idea of giving because I could not imagine that I was not a writer, whether I was seen as successful or not,” Evaristo said. “It’s about looking at how my life and choices have shaped my creativity and my determination to keep going.
“I want it to be for the general reader – including people in the arts, but for anyone interested in looking at how we create life what we want for ourselves, which may mean breaking with routine and tradition, and making choices that may lead to creative achievement but not financial success. I also like the idea that people, who struggle with their careers, in the arts, in their lives, could give me hope through my own story over the decades. ”