Nigerian-British author Bernardine Evaristo recently celebrated the paperback launch of her nonfiction debut Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, a memoir of her life and writing career.
The launch party was held in St Paul’s Pavilion at the Southbank Centre in London sometime in late September. The beautiful shots of the event were taken by photographer Sharon Wallace. Based on the sheer number of photos and the smiling faces of the guests, it looks like the launch party was a huge success!
The launch party was attended by around 150 people from Evaristo’s literary circle and beyond. Some of the attendees included Evaristo’s editor since 1999 Simon Prosser, writers David Shannon, Anni Domingo, Rachel Edwards, Theresa Lola, Claire Lynch, Liv Little, Shani Akilah, Yomi Sode, Elisha Gabb, Carole Hailey, Monique Roffey, Johny Pitts, Paul Burston, Nick Makoha, Ranyechi Udemezue, Paul Mendez, Ronali Collings, Louise Doughty, Okechukwu Nzelu, Dzifa Benson, Joelle Taylor, and Sara Collins.
Evaristo is a prolific Black British writer and academic. She was the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first Black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Evaristo’s nonfiction debut Manifesto is an account of Evaristo’s life and career as she “rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world.” In the book, Evaristo describes her childhood growing up as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother. She also “tells the story of how she helped set up Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her.”
See the photos from Evaristo’s Manifesto launch party below:
***
All images sourced from Instagram @bernardineevaristo.
COMMENTS -
Reader Interactions