Panel discussion: Bernardine Evaristo in Translation, 5th November 2025

On 6 November 2025, the University of Reading will host an International Symposium on the work of Booker Prize-winning author, Bernardine Evaristo. It will be the first academic symposium dedicated to her work. (For more information about the symposium, click here.)

Before the main symposium begins, a special panel dedicated to discussing Evaristo’s work in translation and adaptation will be held on Wednesday 5 November from 4.30-6.30pm (GMT). Our four international panellists for this event and the titles of their talks are as follows:

• “Girl, Woman, Other… Readers: Translation and Reception in Serbia” 
  Emilija Lipovšek, Academy of Applied Studies Belgrade (Serbia)
• “Bernardine Evaristo in Polish: Prototyping inclusivity in translation”
  Bartosz Wójcik, Maria Curie Skłodowska University (Poland) 
• “From Girl, Woman, Other to Dekle, ženska, druga_i: translating gender”
  Katja Zakrajsek (Slovenia)
• “Translating/Adapting Bernardine Evaristo’s (Short) Fiction: From Identity Fragmentation to a Multimodal Transformative Storytelling of Subversive Liminalities”
  Ester Gendusa, University of Palermo (Italy)

Welcome: Professor Daniela La Penna, Head of School of Humanities and Co-Director of the Centre for Book Cultures & Publishing at the University of Reading

Chair: Dr Nicola Abram, University of Reading

The event is free to attend and will be held in person and online.

To register for a ticket to join us in person, click here.
(Please note: The venue for the panel discussion is the Global Study Lounge, 2nd floor, Edith Morley Building, University of Reading, RG6 6EL)

To register for a ticket to join us online, click here.

More information on our speakers:

Emilija Lipovšek Defended doctoral thesis entitled ‘Postcolonial London: City and Identity’ at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, Serbia in 2015. Has participated in a number of international conferences with presentations and published papers on postcolonial authors and novels (including Evaristo’s Lara, Soul Tourists), literary and cultural tourism, industrial cultural heritage. Works as a Senior Lecturer of English Language at the College of Tourism, Academy of Applied Studies Belgrade, Serbia and has held several seminars on postcolonial literature at the University of Bamberg in Germany.

Bartosz Wójcik is the author of Afro-Caribbean Poetry in English: Cultural Traditions (2015) and a member of the Polish Literary Translators Association (http://stl.org.pl/profil/bartosz-wojcik/). Published translations of prose include Diana McCaulay (Jamaica), Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad and Tobago), and Nathan McCall (USA), as well as poetry by Lauren K. Alleyne (Trinidad / USA), Jacqueline Bishop (Jamaica), Stewart Brown (UK), Carol Ann Duffy (UK), Salena Godden (UK), Joy Harjo (USA), Kei Miller (Jamaica / UK), Grace Nichols (Guyana / UK), Roger Robinson (Trinidad / UK), Tanya Shirley (Jamaica), and Dorothea Smartt (Barbados / UK). Translator of academic essays (literary studies, visual culture, history, political studies), theatre plays, and films.

Katja Zakrajšek holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Ljubljana. She is a literary translator working from English, French and Portuguese into Slovenian. Believing in decolonising and diversifying literary canons, she prefers to focus on literary traditions and spaces underrepresented in translation, in particular African and Afro-Diasporic writing. She is the recipient of several translation awards, including the Sovre award for best literary translation into Slovenian for Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other in 2022.

Ester Gendusa holds an MA from Birkbeck College and a PhD from the University of Palermo (Italy), where she is currently a research fellow in English language and translation. The author of Asimmetrie di genere e di razza in The Grass is Singing di Doris Lessing (2011) and of the first Italian monograph on Bernardine Evaristo’s literary production, Identità nere e cultura europea (2014), she has published extensively on post-colonial and (Black) British authors. Her most recent research interests reside in the interplay between language and power in contemporary multimodal discursive arenas (including news media) and in the representation of antinormative identities in British and American films.