Thursday 6 November 2025 ⋅ 9am-5:30pm ⋅ Whiteknights Campus ⋅ Edith Morley building rooms G44 and G27
WELCOME
Nicola Abram, University of Reading
Gail Marshall, University of Reading (Assistant Pro Vice Chancellor for Research – Heritage and Creativity)
PANEL 1: KINSHIP, COMMUNITY, CONTINUITY
Chair: Rebecca Roach, University of Birmingham
“Part of a continuum”: Generations and Continuity in Bernardine Evaristo’s Fiction
Fiona Tolan, Liverpool John Moores University
Ecologies of Vulnerability: Rethinking Resistance and Community in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other
Immaterial Sites and Elective Kinship: (Trans)forming Digital Space in Girl, Woman, Other
Rolake Osabia
Literary Activism, Circuits of Value and Girl, Woman, Other: Black Women’s Voices in Literary Spaces
Kate Wallis, University of Exeter
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KEYNOTE:
Cartographies of Affect: Bernardine Evaristo’s London Fictions
Suzanne Scafe
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PANEL 2: ‘RE-IMAGINING’
Chair: Elisabeth Bekers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Atypical Tourism: Talking Ghosts, Transcendental Memories and Historical Recovery in Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists
Ibrahim Williams, University of Mississippi
Satire and Rascality in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots
Arwa F. Al-Mubaddel, Cardiff University / King Saud University
Bernardine Evaristo: A Short Story Writer?
Ana García-Soriano, University of Leeds
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PANEL 3: ‘LIFE AND/AS WORK’
Chair: Shelley Harris, University of Reading
Bernardine Evaristo: A Snapshot of Life in Pictures and Words
Tracey Walters, Stony Brook University
The Mother of All Theatres – a creative critical response to Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other
Helen Williams, Brunel University of London
Ten Lessons from Bernardine Evaristo on Writing, Craft, and Creative Generosity
Mariana Felix, Brunel University of London