Bernardine Evaristo receives Women's Prize outstanding contribution award
The trust is known for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a popular literary award that was established in 1996.
Evaristo, 66, who was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, will be presented with the award and £100,000 prize money on June 12 at the Women's Prize Trust's summer party in London.
She said: 'I am completely overwhelmed and overjoyed to receive this unique award.
'I feel such deep gratitude towards the Women's Prize for honouring me in this way.
'Over the last three decades I have witnessed with great admiration and respect how the Women's Prize for Fiction has so bravely and brilliantly championed and developed women's writing, always from an inclusive stance.
'The financial reward comes as an unexpected blessing in my life and, given the mission of the Women's Prize Trust, it seems fitting that I spend this substantial sum supporting other women writers; more details on this will be forthcoming.'
Evaristo will be honoured alongside the winners of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, which was won by V V Ganeshananthan and Naomi Klein respectively, last year.
Authors who have been longlisted or won the Women's Prize for Fiction over the past three decades, and had published a minimum of five books, were eligible for the outstanding contribution award.
The winner of the outstanding contribution award was selected by a judging panel chaired by novelist and non-fiction author Kate Mosse, founder director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and Women's Prize for Non-Fiction.
She said: 'My fellow judges and I always knew it would be a tall order to choose just one author from the many exceptional contemporary writers who have made such a huge contribution in a world where women's voices are increasingly being silenced, where the arts and artists are under attack.
'Books encourage empathy, they offer alternative and diverse points of view; they help us to stand in other people's shoes and to see our own worlds in the mirror.
'In the end, we felt that Bernardine Evaristo's beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work (which includes plays, poetry, essays, monologues and memoir as well as award-winning fiction), her dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a forty-year career, made her the ideal recipient of the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award.'
The Women's Prize Trust says the one-off award marks the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Evaristo, who was born in Woolwich, south London, and is of Anglo-Nigerian descent, has shed light on the lives of modern British women through her work, taking an interest in the African diaspora.
She has launched several successful writing schemes to support women writers and under-represented writers of colour, including the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets.
Several of her works, including The Emperor's Babe and Hello Mum, have been adapted into BBC Radio 4 plays.
Evaristo's other novels include Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists and Mr Loverman. The latter was turned into an eight-part BBC drama starring Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare.
The actors, who star as lovers struggling to go public with their relationship, picked up Baftas for their roles during the academy's TV awards in May.
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Spectator
4 hours ago
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Scotsman
17 hours ago
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Booker Prize winner James Kelman says Scottish writers 'too timid' because they are 'made to feel bitter'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Scottish writers are 'too timid' because they are made to feel bitter and as if they cannot let go of the past, Booker Prize winning author James Kelman has warned. Glasgow-born Mr Kelman, who won the Booker in 1994 with How Late It Was, How Late, told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival the 'depth' of Scottish language and culture had been 'destroyed by an imperial force'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mr Kelman said his work is no longer published in the UK, which he said was indicative of the situation surrounding Scottish culture. He said at the event on Sunday that he believed Scottish writers were too timid because they were made to feel "bitter" or as if they could not forget history. In response to a question from an audience member about the future of Scots and Gaelic in literature following the passing of the Scottish Languages Bill last month, Mr Kelman said: 'I'm not sure how it's going to go. I'm no longer published here, so you can say that how things have been over the last ten years is reflected in the speaker today. I've not been published in England since 2012.' James Kelman was speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Mr Kelman said his work was now published by a small, left-wing press in the US. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He said: 'There's a continual push to sanitise ordinary language as it's used by ordinary people. Nothing's changed in that sense. Sometimes I do feel as if some Scottish writers are being too timid. Sometimes it's because they're always made to feel as if they're bitter or 'why don't you forget about that?'. 'Or as though you're going to confuse the British bourgeoisie with being English or something. It's like 'no, we're past that really'. We had these issues in the mid 18th century, we can go beyond that.' Mr Kelman added: 'The issue with language is if you're not allowed to use a language in your culture, then it's dead. That's what's happened across the world just now. How many languages have been destroyed in, say, the African continent and parts of Asia? How many languages were just killed and destroyed and not allowed?' He referred to a previous anecdote about his Gaelic-speaking grandmother, whom he says he mocked as a child. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad James Kelman spoke openly about his Gaelic-speaking grandmother | Getty Images 'The glaring example is my grandmother and how as kids we all made a fool of it,' he said. 'When I was a kid, Gaelic speakers were ridiculed. That's not long ago. You can't explore your own language.' The Booker Prize winner gave the example of 'Glasgow slang', citing words such as 'polis' and 'huis', which come from Norse origins. He said he had started to spell the word 'huis' with 'uis' in his writing. 'My editor said 'you can't spell it that way, it's hoose'. He said 'that's Glasgow slang'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'You have to remember, the so-called Glasgow slang is actually different forms of Gaelic and it's also Norse. It's so glaringly Norse. Why the hell are we always being told that 'dour' is slang? That 'polis' is slang? All of the words we know are actually Norse.
