BERNARDINE EVARISTO

WHAT, I wonder, does it feel like to know a whole county is reading your book at the same time? Pretty good I imagine. BERNADINE EVARISTO knows because her book HELLO MUM was chosen as the Suffolk big read a couple of years ago, which meant thousands of people from Ipswich to Lowestoft, from Newmarket to Felixstowe were reading that book. And loving it. And not just because it was given away free either. 70,000 copies of Hello Mum have been sold since then. Not bad.

Hello Mum is a very accessible, readable book, taking the form of a letter written by a 14 year old boy to his mother. But Bernadine has written experimental and challenging work too. Her first novel THE EMPEROR'S BABE is a historical novel-in-verse and SOUL TOURIST is a novel-with-verse. There's also the subversive and satirical BLONDE ROOTS - a counter-factual story which imagines a world where white people are enslave by black owners. And then there's her plays, her collaborations with musicians - her anthologies, her teaching and her latest book MR LOVERMAN - out in August - where the protagonist is a 75 year old male Antiguan poet who has spent his whole life hiding his true nature and has to face up to the consequences of dealing with he truth coming out,  as he is trying to come to terms with the dying of the light.

Oh, and Bernardine is an MBE. Did I not mention that? The only Member of the British Empire to have answered these ten scary questions... (so far)


Can I have your autobiography in EXACTLY 50 words (not 51, not 49)?

Anglo-Nigerian writer; female; Londoner all my life; fourth of eight children; writer of seven books of fiction and verse fiction; explorer of the African diaspora - past, present, imagined, lived, travelled; teacher of creative writing at Brunel Uni and for UEA-Guardian; award’s winner, award’s judge; critic, editor, cyclist; MBE


Why should people read MR LOVERMAN?

Because they won’t have read anything like it before. Black, gay, 74, blinged-up Londoner from Antigua who is married to his deeply religious wife. Also, funny (and tragic), irreverent, structurally adventurous, and set in the hipster Stoke Newington.

What is your most pressing concern right this minute?

I’m concerned about inequality of all kinds, especially society’s hegemonic structures that maintain privilege and power for the few and damn the rest.


How is being a woman who writes different from being a man who writes?

I have written quite a few first person male protagonists and I enjoy the literary transvestism involved in adopting a male voice. I want my fiction to have emotional depth, and this could be one of the strengths of being a woman writer. However, once I’ve had the sex change I’ll let you know what it’s like to write with a willy. Best, Bernard.


Who - in life or writing - do you most admire?

So many people, so many writers, but too many to mention. Off late: Glenda Jackson for her speech about The Milk Snatcher last week – it made me realize how much we need to hear more orators in politics. For the tiddlywinks reading this, Glenda was the No I classical actress of her generation; Ken Livingston (always); Gary Younge for being one of the few black media commentators allowed to speak in mainstream medi; Michelle Obama and her husband…

Why do we need the Women's Prize for Literature?

To promote women’s fiction but it does make a mockery of that when it simply
gives more to those who have most, which I think somehow defies its objective.

Would you eat a mucky fat sandwich?

Not in million years, mate. Actually, the very idea has me retching. Where are we, Victorian England? That’s like asking me if I’d eat a McDonalds. It’s Pret,
Itsu and Carluccios all the way for me, love.

What will the next book be about? (does it have a title yet?)

My next book is floating around the blue skies of my imagination…er..

If you could be anywhere right now, it would be....?

A ‘luxury room’ stay in a Champneys in, say, Bali? Can you fix it?
 
Tell me something I don't know...

I used to heckle ‘offensive’ theatre plays in the angry early twenties. I’d always sit at the back so that I could make a quick escape. Now I sit at the back for the same reason, but
I don’t heckle, obv.

MR LOVERMAN is out on August 29 with Hamish Hamilton. You know what to do.