Evaristo was born in Eltham, south-east London, and christened Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo.[13] She was raised in Woolwich, the fourth of eight children born to an English mother, Jacqueline M. Brinkworth, of English, Irish and German heritage,[14] who was a schoolteacher,[15] and a Nigerian father, Julius Taiwo Bayomi Evaristo (1927–2001), known as Danny, born in British Cameroon, raised in Nigeria, who migrated to Britain in 1949 and became a welder and the first black councillor in the Borough of Greenwich, for the Labour Party.[16] Her paternal grandfather, Gregorio Bankole Evaristo (d. 1927), was a Yoruba Aguda who sailed from Brazil to Nigeria. He was a customs officer. Her paternal grandmother, Zenobia Evaristo, née Sowemima (d. 1967), was from Abeokuta in Nigeria.[17][18][19][20]
Evaristo was educated at Eltham Hill Grammar School for Girls from 1970 to 1977,[21] and in 1972 she joined Greenwich Young People's Theatre (now Tramshed, in Woolwich), about which she has said: "I was twelve years old and it was the making of my childhood and led to a life-long career spent in the arts."[22] She went on to attend Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, graduating in 1982,[23]
In the 1980s, together with Paulette Randall and Patricia Hilaire, she founded Theatre of Black Women,[9] the first theatre company in Britain of its kind. In the 1990s, she organised Britain's first black British writing conference, held at the Museum of London, and also Britain's first black British theatre conference, held at the Royal Festival Hall. In 1995 she co-founded and directed Spread the Word, London's writer development agency.[24]
Evaristo continued further education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, receiving her doctorate in creative writing in 2013.[25] In 2019, she was appointed Woolwich Laureate by the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, reconnecting to and writing about the home town she left when she was 18.[26] In 2022, she was awarded the "Freedom of the Borough of the Royal Borough of Greenwich".[27]
