Bernardine Evaristo ‘astonished’ to receive one-off Women’s Prize for outstanding contribution

Trailblazing author Bernardine Evaristo has said she is “astonished” to have been honoured with a one-off outstanding contribution award to mark the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Evaristo, who was the first black woman to win the prestigious Booker Prize when the award was shared with Margaret Atwood in 2019, told the BBC: “This [prize] wasn’t on anyone’s radar… I feel very blessed.”

The accolade is in honour of her career’s work – which includes her Booker-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other – and her long-running advocacy for inclusion and diversity in the arts.

Evaristo will receive £100,000 prize money and a sculpture.

Both will be presented on 12 June at a ceremony in London, where the winners of the 2025 Women’s Prizes for Fiction and Non-Fiction will also be announced.

Evaristo said she would put the prize money into a project to support other women writers, and will give more details in the autumn.

“I’m not doing it because I’m a multi-millionaire,” she joked. “It just feels right to put back in. We should support each other.”

The writer said it was “incredibly validating” that her advocacy work had been recognised by the Women’s Prize body.

“Women’s fiction was in a very bad place when it [the Prize charity] began. Every year it’s shone a light… and helped to amplify women’s voices.”

Evaristo co-founded Britain’s first black women’s theatre company, Theatre of Black Women, which ran from 1982 to 1988.

She also set up the Spread the Word writers’ development agency, the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, among other projects. She was made an MBE in 2009 for services to literature.

The 66-year-old said she began her activism work in the 1980s “simply because there was a need for it”.

“At that time, it’s not something I saw as separate to my creativity. I did it because I knew I wanted to take responsibility, to be the change I wanted to see. I did it because it needed to be done.”

It’s important not to rest on your laurels because “if we don’t keep up momentum, the status quo might close in on itself again”, she said.

“It’s not something where we can say ‘We’ve achieved this, we can drop it’.”

She said there was a current “backlash against freedoms women had earned over a century”.

“There is always the risk of a backlash.”

She wouldn’t be drawn on her next writing project because “it’s not wise to announce things prematurely”, but she said she still has time to juggle both her writing and her activism work.

“I’ve been here a long time… I’ve had a long time to get things done! My main focus is my writing. I’m a writer who has to juggle lots of things… to create tensions. That’s how I work.

“I’m good at compartmentalising. But I do work all the time. My husband and I have been together 18 years and we went on our first holiday three years ago!”

But she said that’s because “I enjoy what I do”.

“I work weekends, there’s no distinction between weekdays and the weekend. I don’t need to drag myself away from what I do. It’s positive energy.”

The Women’s Prize Trust says it aims to celebrate and amplify women’s voices; open up writing as a viable career for women from all backgrounds; and promote original work.

The judging panel for the contribution award included critic and writer Bonnie Greer, broadcaster Vick Hope, and author Kate Mosse.

Mosse said in statement: “Bernardine Evaristo’s beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work, her dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a 40-year career, made her the ideal recipient.

“Significantly, Evaristo has consistently used her own magnificent achievements and exceptional talent as a springboard to create opportunities for others, to promote unheard and under-heard women’s voices and to ensure that every female writer feels she has a conduit for her talent.”

Evaristo was born the fourth of eight children in Woolwich, south east London, to an English mother and a Nigerian father. Her father was a welder and local Labour councillor; her mother was a teacher.

She spent her teenage years at Greenwich Young People’s Theatre and went on to study at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she earned her PhD in creative writing.

She is currently president of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) and a professor of creative writing at Brunel University, London.

Her other creative works include her 2013 novel Mr Loverman, about an elderly man whose marriage falls apart after his long-term affair with his male friend.

It was adapted for a BBC drama series starring Lennie James, and recently picked up two major acting prizes at the Bafta TV Awards.

Evaristo’s other books include satirical novel Blonde Roots and a memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up.