In a landmark moment marking the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo has been named the recipient of a one-time Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award.

The award comes with a £100,000 prize and a specially commissioned sculpture titled Thoughtful by artist Caroline Russell. Both will be presented to Evaristo at a ceremony in London on June 12, where the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-Fiction winners will also be announced.

“I am completely overwhelmed and overjoyed to receive this unique award,” Evaristo said to The Guardian. “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.” “Women’s fiction was in a very bad place when it [the Prize charity] began,” Evaristo added to the BBC. “Every year it’s shone a light… and helped to amplify women’s voices.”

This special one-off award recognizes not only Evaristo’s extensive and genre-spanning body of work but also her role as an advocate for inclusivity and equity in the arts. “We felt that Bernardine Evaristo’s beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work… 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,” shared Kate Mosse CBE, Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and chair of the judging panel in the prize announcement. “Significantly, Evaristo has consistently used her own magnificent achievements and exceptional talent as a springboard to create opportunities for others.”

Born in Woolwich, southeast London, to an English mother and Nigerian father, Evaristo’s literary and activist journey began in the 1980s, co-founding Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, Theatre of Black Women. Over the decades, she has launched multiple initiatives aimed at mentoring and supporting writers of color, including the Complete Works poets’ scheme, Spread the Word, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and most recently, the RSL Scriptorium awards. She currently serves as President of the Royal Society of Literature—the first writer of color and only the second woman to hold the post. This year, she is also being honored by the first Bernardine Evaristo Symposium hosted by the University of Reading.

A turning point in her career came in 2019 when Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize, which she shared with Margaret Atwood for Girl, Woman, Other. “I became an ‘overnight success’ after 40 years working professionally in the arts,” she writes in her memoir Manifesto: On Never Giving Up.

This award comes at the heels of the success of the BBC adaptation of Evaristo’s 2013 novel Mr Loverman, which, at the time felt like it was about a “taboo subject.” Upon publication, she was told it was “too niche” to be adapted for television, because its protagonist, Barrington Jedidiah Walker, “was Black, old and gay.” In rousing defiance of this conservative attitude, the adaptation of Mr Loverman went nominated for three BAFTAs and won two, bringing wider audiences and acclaim to Evaristo’s work.

Speaking to the BBC, Evaristo expressed her surprise at receiving the new award, saying she was “astonished” and that “this [prize] wasn’t on anyone’s radar… I feel very blessed.” She also shared plans to use the prize money to support other women writers: “I’m not doing it because I’m a multi-millionaire,” she said with a laugh. “It just feels right to put back in. We should support each other.”

Daria Bukhman, Co-Founder and Chair of Bukhman Philanthropies, echoed the significance of Evaristo’s contributions: “Her generosity, courage, and vision have reshaped the literary landscape, making her a beacon for the power of storytelling.”

Despite having never won the Women’s Prize herself—Girl, Woman, Other was shortlisted—Evaristo remains deeply connected to the values of the organization. “This award more than makes up for it,” she joked to The Guardian.

Even after all of her success, Evaristo continues to champion new voices while reflecting on her own journey with clarity and purpose. “It is very important for me as a Black, British, working-class, now-older woman to acknowledge that really important position,” she told The Guardian. “I’m not there to endorse the status quo. I’m there to bring other people with me and to open the doors, always, to great talent.”

This latest honor celebrates Evaristo’s legacy as not only a literary innovator but as a committed advocate for others. As she put it herself in The Guardian, “It seems fitting that I spend this substantial sum supporting other women writers.”

A huge congratulations to Bernardine Evaristo on this well-deserved award!

Check out the post below from the Women’s Prize organizers praising Evaristo’s work and legacy: