Nora Ellis: You published for decades before the Booker. What kept you working through the quiet years?
Bernardine Evaristo: Sheer bloody-mindedness, and a community. I came from theatre, so I never expected to be discovered — I expected to build. I ran my own company, I toured, I taught. The prize arrived when I was sixty and by then I had eight books and no illusions. That's actually a very safe way to receive good news.
Nora Ellis: Girl, Woman, Other has twelve central characters and almost no full stops. How did that form arrive?
Bernardine Evaristo: I call it fusion fiction. I wanted the rhythm of poetry with the reach of a novel, so I dropped most of the punctuation and let the line breaks carry the breath. And twelve characters because one Black British woman cannot represent all of us. Put twelve in a book and the reader can't reduce any of them to a type.
Nora Ellis: How do you keep twelve voices distinct?
Bernardine Evaristo: I write each one's history far beyond what's on the page — where they went to school, what they're embarrassed about, what music was playing when they were nineteen. Ninety percent never appears. But you can hear the difference between a woman who has been listened to all her life and one who hasn't, and that's in the sentence shape, not the dialect.
Nora Ellis: What's the purpose of the work for you now?
Bernardine Evaristo: To put people into literature who were left out of it, and to enjoy myself doing it. I'm not interested in worthy books. I want them alive, funny, argumentative — the way a room full of women actually sounds.
Nora Ellis: Advice to a writer who feels they've started too late?
Bernardine Evaristo: There is no timetable. The only thing that disqualifies you is stopping.