[a][b][3][4][5] Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.

[13] She was raised in Woolwich, the fourth of eight children born to an English mother, Jacqueline M. Brinkworth, of English, Irish and German heritage,[14] who was a schoolteacher,[15] and a Nigerian father, Julius Taiwo Bayomi Evaristo (1927–2001), known as Danny, born in British Cameroon, raised in Nigeria, who migrated to Britain in 1949 and became a welder and the first black councillor in the Borough of Greenwich, for the Labour Party.

[17][18][19][20] Evaristo was educated at Eltham Hill Grammar School for Girls from 1970 to 1977,[21] and in 1972 she joined Greenwich Young People's Theatre (now Tramshed, in Woolwich), about which she has said: "I was twelve years old and it was the making of my childhood and led to a life-long career spent in the arts.

[30] Her verse novel The Emperor's Babe (Penguin, 2001) is about a black teenage girl, whose parents are from Nubia, coming of age in Roman London nearly 2,000 years ago.

[33] Evaristo's fourth book, Soul Tourists (Penguin, 2005), is an experimental novel about a mismatched couple driving across Europe to the Middle East, which featured ghosts of real figures of colour from European history.

[34][35] Her novel Blonde Roots (Penguin, 2008) is a satire that inverts the history of the transatlantic slave trade and replaces it with a universe where Africans enslave Europeans.

[40] Her 2014 novel Mr Loverman (Penguin UK, 2013/Akashic Books USA, 2014) is about a septuagenarian Caribbean Londoner, a closet homosexual considering his options after a 50-year marriage to his wife.

[44] Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other (May 2019, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK) is an innovative polyvocal "fusion fiction"[45] about 12 primarily black British women.

Their ages span 19 to 93 and they are a mix of cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, classes and geographies, and the novel charts their hopes, struggles and intersecting lives.

In July 2019, the novel was selected for the Booker Prize longlist,[46] then made the shortlist, announced on 3 September 2019, alongside books by Margaret Atwood, Lucy Ellmann, Chigozie Obioma, Salman Rushdie and Elif Shafak.

[62] Evaristo's writing also includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and projects for stage and radio.

She offers a personal survey of the representation of the art of British women of colour in the context of the gallery's forthcoming major rehang.

[67][68] Evaristo guest-edited The Sunday Times Style magazine (UK) in July 2020 with a black-woman/-xn takeover, featuring an array of young artists, activists and change-makers.

Evaristo was also editor of FrontSeat intercultural magazine in the 1990s,[38] and one of the editors of Black Women Talk Poetry anthology (published in 1987 by the Black Womantalk Poetry collective of which Evaristo was part),[4] Britain's first such substantial anthology, featuring among its 20 poets Jackie Kay, Dorothea Smartt and Adjoa Andoh.

[78][79] In 2015, Evaristo wrote and presented a two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary called Fiery Inspiration: Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement.

[44] Her many podcast appearances in Britain include interviews conducted by Adwoa Aboah, Samira Ahmed, Elizabeth Day, Grace Dent, Annie MacManus, Graham Norton, James O'Brien, Natalie Portman, Jay Rayner, Simon Savidge, Pandora Sykes and Jeremy Vine.

[85] Previous arts mentors since the programme began in 2002 include Margaret Atwood, Gilberto Gil, Philip Glass, Sir Peter Hall, David Hockney, Sir Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Spike Lee, Phyllida Lloyd, Lin Manuel Miranda, Toni Morrison, Jessye Norman, Yousou N'Dour, Michael Ondaatje, Martin Scorsese, Wole Soyinka, Julie Taymor and Mario Vargas Llosa.

[7] In this national development programme,[88] 30 poets were mentored, each over a one- or two-year period, and many went on to publish books, win awards and receive serious recognition for their poetry.

I am so proud, therefore, to be the figurehead of such an august and robust literature organisation that is so actively and urgently committed to being inclusive "[11][97] In 2022 she commented on the subject of initiatives to bring in younger and more diverse writers to the RSL: “It’s like you’ve got two hundred years of history to counterbalance....

[100] From 2023, the RSL began to be criticized over the new diversity of fellowship, the emphasis on younger fellows,[101] and for not taking a strong enough stance about the stabbing of Salman Rushdie[102] and the cancellation of Kate Clanchy.