Bernardine Evaristo was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian father. The fourth of eight siblings, she was raised in Woolwich, South London, and originally trained as an actress and worked in theatre. 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 tragi-comic story of Zuleika, a girl of Sudanese parents, who grows up in Roman London 1800 years ago and who has an affair with the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Her novel-with-verse, Soul Tourists (2005), is about a car journey across Europe starring a mismatched couple, Stanley and Jessie, with cameo appearances en route from ghosts of colour from European history such as Pushkin, Alessandro de Medici and Mary Seacole.