
Bernardine Evaristo to receive the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award
The recipient for the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award is the author Bernardine Evaristo.
The award is a special one-off to mark the 30th anniversary year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, funded by Bukhman Philanthropies. The award celebrates Bernardine’s body of work, her transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices across the cultural landscape.
Bernardine Evaristo is a celebrated author with a global reputation and is a passionate advocate for inclusivity in the arts. Her writing spans a wide range of genres, and she’s been recognised with over 90 awards, nominations, fellowships, and honours. Beyond her incredible literary achievements, Bernardine has led countless initiatives to tackle inequality in the creative world, inspiring new generations of writers and artists to embrace diversity and push for change.
The judging panel was chaired by novelist and non-fiction author Kate Mosse CBE, Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Kate was joined by a selection of former judges of the Women’s Prize for Fiction: Dame Gillian Beer, academic and writer; Scarlett Curtis, writer, activist and trustee of the Women’s Prize Trust board; Bonnie Greer OBE, playwright, author and critic; and Vick Hope, broadcaster and host of the Women’s Prize Bookshelfie podcast.
On behalf of the Judges, Kate Mosse, Women’s Prizes Founder Director, commented:
'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. 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. Congratulations to Bernardine and a huge thank you to my fellow judges for such a joyous and celebratory process.'
Daria Bukhman, Co-Founder and Chair of Bukhman Philanthropies, said:
'Bukhman Philanthropies is very proud to be supporting the Women’s Prize Trust with this special award to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Bernardine Evaristo is a writer with a laudable career who is thoroughly deserving to be named the recipient. Through her groundbreaking work, she has brought to life stories that challenge, inspire, and transform, while tirelessly championing opportunities for women and marginalised voices. Her generosity, courage, and vision have reshaped the literary landscape, making her a beacon for the power of storytelling. This award honours Bernardine’s extraordinary achievements and her enduring impact on the world of books.'
Bernardine Evaristo's debut verse novel Lara (1997) was republished by Bloodaxe Books in 2009 in an expanded edition. Bloodaxe has also published poetry collections and anthologies connected to The Complete Works and the James Berry Poetry Prize, two of the many successful initiatives devised by Bernardine with a view to encouraging publication of a much more diverse range of writers in the UK.
Bernardine will receive £100,000 and a special sculpture by Caroline Russell, both of which will be presented on 12 June 2025 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in London.
There will be an opportunity to meet Bernardine Evaristo on 11 June as part of the Women's Prize presentation. Details here.
Full details of the award, videos of the judges speaking about their choice, and a link to an interview with Bernardine Evaristo can be found on the Women's Prize website here.
Bernardine Evaristo responds to being the recipient of the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award
Bernardine Evaristo was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Woman’s Hour on the day of the announcement, 4 June 2025. First item. Listen via BBC Sounds here.
~~~~~
British-Nigerian writer Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of nine books and numerous other published and produced works that span the genres of novels, poetry, verse fiction, short fiction, essays, literary criticism, and radio and theatre drama. Her novel, Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2019) won the Booker Prize 2019, and in 2020, the British Book Award’s Author of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year, and the Indie Book Award for Fiction. She is also an editor of anthologies and special issues of magazines. Her writing and projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. Her first verse novel Lara (1997) was republished by Bloodaxe in 2009. She co-edited the Spread the Word new poets anthology Ten (Bloodaxe Books/The Complete Works, 2010) with Daljit Nagra. Her memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up was published by Pengiun in October 2021.
Bernardine Evaristo's debut verse novel Lara (1997, 2009) is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse based on Bernardine Evaristo’s own childhood and family history. The eponymous Lara is a mixed-race girl raised during the 60s and 70s in Woolwich, then a white suburb of London. In 2019 Bernardine became the inaugural Woolwich Laureate, appointed by the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, serving what is now a multicultural community.
Bernardine set up The Complete Works programme, which supported 30 poets of colour from 2008 through to 2020, and which became the most successful collective ever formed in British poetry. A report she initiated found that in 2008 the level of poets of colour published by major presses was less than 1%. By 2020 it was over 20%. The 30 poets mentored and supported by the programme had their work published in Bloodaxe's three Ten anthologies, followed by Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets (2023), edited by Nathalie Teitler, Director of The Complete Works, and Karen McCarthy Woolf, a Fellow of the programme who went on to edit the second two TEN anthologies featuring work by The Complete Works poets. Bernardine co-edited the first Ten anthology with Daljit Nagra in 2010. Mapping the Future presented new or recent work by Complete Works Fellows including Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Kayo Chingonyi, Inua Ellams, Will Harris, Sarah Howe, Roger Robinson, Warsan Shire, Yomi Ṣode and Karen McCarthy Woolf.
The Complete Works Poetry played a significant role in this transformation of the British poetry scene, producing three Forward Prize winners, two T.S. Eliot Prize and Ted Hughes Award winners, along with single prize wins for the Somerset Maugham Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. TCW Fellows have gone on to judge every major poetry award, publishing over 40 collections between them.
Together with Nathalie Teitler, Bernardine Evaristo also devised the James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021. The inaugural winners with collections published in 2023 included Marjorie Lotfi, whose debut collection The Wrong Person to Ask went on to win the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2024. The three joint winners of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024 will have their debut collections published by Bloodaxe in 2026. The James Berry Poetry Prize is Britain’s first and only poetry prize offering both expert mentoring and book publication for young or emerging poets of colour.
[04 June 2025]