What is the first news event you can recall?
I remember being very upset when the very fanciable pop star Marc Bolan died in a car crash.
What is one bit of advice you’d give to your younger self?
You’ll grow out of it. Just enjoy the ride, and appreciate that everything will be great for your future fiction.
Can you teach someone to be a writer?
Every art form can be taught. Yet some silly people still argue that creative writing is the exception, in spite of a century’s worth of evidence to the contrary.
Who is your role model?
I’ve long been a fan of Tracey Emin because she’s always been true to herself with her art and her personality. I admire how she has made public her health issues.
What have you changed your mind about?
I was raised in a socialist household and used to have no time for the royal family, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate the members who consistently use the privilege they were born into for the greater good.
What is your favourite quotation?
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it” by Oscar Wilde. There are so many different versions of the past only now surfacing, and our culture is richer for it.
What piece of music, play, novel or film last brought you to tears?
The 2020 Olympics, actually. I’d start watching some random sport like women’s weightlifting, and I’d quickly become heavily invested in it and end up in tears.
What do you most regret?
Eating so many delightful packets of crisps in my life. Trans fats; not good.
What is the biggest change in the literary world since you started publishing?
In the eighties, the industry was mostly white, male and privately and Oxbridge-educated. I felt completely alienated. The past two years have filled me with hope that the literature of my country will one day be written by and for everyone.
“Manifesto: On Never Giving Up” by Bernardine Evaristo is out from Hamish Hamilton
