A memoir and manual of careers advice for creatives
Bernardine Evaristo hasn’t always been a star. But she has – at least according to her own Manifesto – always gleefully aimed beyond the stratosphere. A sort of memoir-manual, her latest book chronicles her life up until the present day and offers career advice for any creative who’s ever had a crisis of confidence.
Though her fandom may have expanded dramatically after her Booker win in 2019, Evaristo’s zeal for writing – whether poetry, prose or a blend of the two (“fusion fiction”, as she calls it) – has been consistent since well before publication of first novel, Lara, in 1997, as has her determination. Though she may have grown as a thinker (“I see now that my feminism as a young woman was paper thin,” she muses about her early, mischievous days as a theatre practitioner), she has, it seems, always been a fighter: for what’s right; for the space to express herself; and for the benefit of others with dreams like hers.
