Bernardine Evaristo Thanks the Stage

Recent Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo pays tribute to a youth spent in the theater in a new essay for the Guardian. She credits acting with starting her lifelong career in the arts. “I came to love acting so much I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” she writes. “Rather like the writer I eventually became, I relished inhabiting characters who were not myself, expanding my own character, personality and emotions beyond the limits of my teenage identity. I found the process fascinating, absorbing and deeply rewarding. […] I learned that the arts world cherished difference, unlike my predominantly white girls’ school where everyone wore the same haircut, which I could never achieve anyway.”