What Would Bernardine Read?

When an award-winning, best-selling author puts together a list of their must-reads books, you rush to your favourite bookseller and get to page turning. And when that is Bernardine Evaristo, of Girl, Woman, Other fame? You do so on the double. To help further critical reading throughout the Black Lives Matter Movement, Evaristo has curated a list of her top 20 Black British womxn writers for you to support and read right now.

To that end, the writer and English professor teamed up with Waterstones and literary agency Words Of Colour to curate a multi-genre list of fellow "sisterwriters." "The #BlackLivesMattterUK reading lists have stopped circulating, so I'd like to re-energise the idea," Evaristo tweeted earlier this month.

Evaristo became the first Black female author to win the coveted Booker Prize in 2019. The groundbreaking novel has gone on to become a Sunday Times Bestseller amongst other prestigious literary accolades. Girl, Woman, Other tells the stories of group of black British womxn and grapples with everything from race, to feminism, and sexuality.

Her list of recommended books includes fellow award-winning author Candice Carty-Williams, whose novel Queenie recently won Book Of The Year at the British Book Awards. All titles included have been published in the past two years, though there is a rich back catalogue of books and articles to read if you want to educate yourself or add to your anti-racist reading list. And, there's Black-owned book stores in the UK that you can support, too. Here, though, is Evaristo's edit of the best Black British womxn writers to add to your next book haul.