Bernardine Evaristo receives Women's Prize outstanding contribution award
The one-off literary honour celebrates Evaristo's body of work and dedication to advancing the voices of people from underrepresented backgrounds
(Image: Getty Images )
Award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo has been announced as the recipient of an outstanding contribution award from the Women's Prize Trust.
The one-off literary honour celebrates Evaristo's body of work and dedication to advancing the voices of people from underrepresented backgrounds.
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.
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"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.
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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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