Om het dertigjarige bestaan van de Women’s Prize for Fiction te accentueren is dit jaar een speciale Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award uitgereikt. En deze prijs gaat naar die een vette cheque van 100.000 Britse ponden ontvangt. In Nederland wordt haar werk uitgegeven door De Geus. Volgende week wordt bekend wie de ‘gewone’ Women’s Prize for fiction en voor non-fiction winnen. Yael van der Wouden staat met The Safekeep op de shortlist.

De jury zei over haar werk:

We felt that Bernardine Evaristo’s beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work (which includes plays, poetry, essays, monologues and memoir as well as award-winning fiction), her dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a forty-year career, made her the ideal recipient of the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award. Significantly, Evaristo has consistently used her own magnificent achievements and exceptional talent as a springboard to create opportunities for others, to promote unheard and under-heard women’s voices and to ensure that every female writer feels she has a conduit for her talent. Congratulations to Bernardine and a huge thank you to my fellow judges for such a joyous and celebratory process.