Photos from @yomi.adegoke’s Instagram, credit @oliverholms/@hodadavaine

It was a night of literary glamor and heartfelt celebration as Harper’s Bazaar UK hosted a dazzling soirée at The Bloomsbury Hotel in London to honor Bernardine Evaristo, the inaugural recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction’s Outstanding Contribution Award. Among the elegant attendees was award-winning Nigerian-British journalist and author Yomi Adegoke, who shared her admiration for Evaristo and the joyful atmosphere of the night on Instagram:

“What a joyful evening courtesy of @bazaaruk celebrating one of my favourite people @bernardineevaristo, who won the Outstanding Contribution @womensprize award no one deserves it more ”

Guests including Turkish novelist and essayist Elif Shafak, Ugandan-British actress and playwright Zawe Ashton, and Ugandan-British actress, singer, playwright Sheila Atim gathered on the Dalloway Terrace for champagne and sparkling jasmine tea before heading upstairs for dinner in the flower-filled Seamus Heaney Library. Atim gave a powerful reading from Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe (Penguin 2004), setting the tone for Evaristo’s own speech, in which she announced she would donate her £100,000 prize to launch a new literary venture for unsung female writers.

British-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo was honored with a special, one-off accolade the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, created in order to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This prize includes a £100,000 award and a custom-designed sculpture titled Thoughtful by artist Caroline Russell, both of which the the author received earlier this month on June 12.

This landmark award, celebrating both Evaristo’s groundbreaking fiction and decades-long activism, comes on the heels of her Booker Prize win in 2019 and recent BAFTA success with the TV adaptation of Mr Loverman. Though she was once told her work was “too niche,” the fanfare at Bazaar’s intimate gathering proved just how widely her voice resonates.

Check out the glittering photos from the celebration via Yomi Adegoke and Harper’s Bazaar UK!