A Reading from Bernardine Evaristo
Event details
When
from 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM
Where
Contact Name
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This event is free and open to the public.
Chair: David Farrier
Bernadine Evaristo, author of Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists, The Emperor's Babe and Lara, will be reading from her work and answering questions from the audience.
Bernardine Evaristo was born and raised in London to English and Nigerian parents. She is the acclaimed author of two verse novels: Lara, a semi-autobiographical tale of a mixed-race family in London spanning 150 years, and The Emperor’s Babe, about a black girl growing up in Roman London, AD 211; Soul Tourists, a novel-with-verse which combines elements of the Road movie with cameos from figures throughout European history, including Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’; and a prose novel, Blonde Roots, a Swiftian re-imagining of the Atlantic slave trade in which Africans enslave Europeans.
Her work is vibrant, adventurous, and equally invested in pushing the boundaries of literary form, historical memory, and the complexities of multicultural society. Wasafiri commended Lara, recently re-issued in an expanded and updated form by Bloodaxe Books, for "crossing boundaries, mixing genres, [and] challenging established 'ways of saying'."
Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists, The Emperor's Babe and Lara have been Books of the Year nine times for UK national newspapers and magazines, and Bernardine is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She received an MBE in 2009. Bernardine also actively mentors young writers. 
Bernardine will be reading from her work and answering questions from the audience.
The event will be chaired by Dr David Farrier, Lecturer in Post-colonial Literature at the University of Leicester.
