Bernadine Evaristo is publishing her first book of nonfiction. Titled Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, the book will investigate her long journey as a Black writer in a white-dominated industry. It will be released in the UK by Hamish Hamilton, her publisher of over 20 years, and in the US by Grove Atlantic.
In short post on Facebook, she revealed that Manifesto will be launched on October 3rd at the QED, Southbank, England.
In 2019, Evaristo’s eighth book Girl, Woman, Other won the prestigious Booker Prize. It made the British Nigerian novelist the first Black woman and Black British person to win the prize in its then 52-year history. It later won her Book of the Year and Author of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards. Girl, Woman, Other has been translated into over 30 languages.
What makes Evaristo’s forthcoming title such an exciting prospect is her long mission of championing Black voices in the British literary space. In 1982, she co-founded Britain’s first theatre company by Black women, Theatre of Black Women. In 2007, she setup a poetry mentoring scheme The Complete Works.
Perhaps her most remarkable initiative has been founding the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2012, which became a springboard for the careers of several major contemporary African poets, including Warsan Shire, Safia Elhillo, Gbenga Adesina, and Romeo Oriogun.
Manifesto: On Never Giving Up is out on 3 October 2021 from Hamish Hamilton in the UK and Grove Atlantic in the US.
