Norfolk State University Welcomes Writer-in-Residence

Norfolk, Va.—Norfolk State University welcomes Bernardine Evaristo as the NSU Writer-in-Residence from April 16-27. Evaristo’s residency is sponsored by the NSU English and Foreign Languages Department, the NSU Honors Program and the Virginia Arts Festival. Evaristo is part of the United Kingdom Writer-in-Residence Program, which is an ongoing initiative that places some of the brightest emerging British writers at American universities. They teach and contribute to campus and academic life as well as the cultural life of the host city. An author, playwright and reviewer, Evaristo will conduct master classes and hold a public reading at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, at L. Douglas Wilder Performing Arts Center, which is located on the campus of Norfolk State.

Evaristo was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian father. The fourth of eight siblings, she originally trained as an actress and worked in theater. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels-in-verse: Lara (1997), which traces the roots of a mixed-race English-Nigerian-Brazilian-Irish family over 150 years, three continents and seven generations; and The Emperor’s Babe (2001), the ground-breaking tragedy-comedy about Zuleika, a girl of Sudanese parents who grows up in Roman London and has an affair with Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Her latest novel-in-verse, Soul Tourists (2005), is about a car journey across Europe with a mismatched couple—Stanley and Jessie—with cameo appearances en route from ghosts of color from European history such as Pushkin, Alessandro de Medici and Mary Seacole.

Evaristo’s writing challenges the traditional boundaries of literary genre as she pushes the boundaries of contemporary British writing and what it means to be British.

For more information, call the Office of Communications and Marketing at 757-823-8373 or visit www.nsu.edu .