'The Girl from Woolwich: A Creative Life' with Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo has been appointed as this year's Visiting Professor of Creative Media. As part of the Professorship, she will give a talk on 'The Girl from Woolwich: A Creative Life' on 6 May at the Sheldonian Theatre.

Bernardine Evaristo will talk about how her creativity was shaped by her origins in London of the Sixties and the choices she has made to sustain a lifelong career as a writer.

Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize 2019 with her eighth book, Girl, Woman, Other, the first black woman and black British person to win it. The novel went on to become a global bestseller which was translated into nearly forty languages. The author of essays, journalism, literary criticism, poetry and drama, her other books include a memoir, Manifesto, On Never Giving Up (2021) and her award-winning novel, Mr Loverman (2013), adapted into a BAFTA-winning BBC miniseries in 2024. She has received over 90 awards, honours and nominations, including two British Book Awards and the Women's Prize Outstanding Achievement Award in 2025. As a literary activist she has set up many schemes for writers including the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012-2022) and the Complete Works Mentoring Scheme to develop poets of colour to publication (2007-2017). Her two ongoing projects, both with the Royal Society of Literature, are the RSL Scriptorium Awards, offering her seaside cottage to writers who need a place to write, and the RSL Pioneer Prize, for a living woman writer over 60. The first recipient was Maureen Duffy in 2025 (b.1933). She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a President Emerita of the Royal Society of Literature. www.bevaristo.com

The Visiting Professorship of Creative Media was established in 1996, as part of a generous benefaction from News UK.

Tickets will be sold on a first come, first serve basis. If you purchase a ticket and later find that you are unable to make it, please cancel your ticket so that it can be offered to someone else.

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