Evaristo, Day and Sykes headline Women of the World London festival

Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, Elizabeth Day and Pandora Sykes are headlining this year’s Women of the World London Festival. 

The festival, which celebrates women, girls and non-binary people, returns in person to the Southbank Centre from 11th to 13th March to mark International Women’s Day. 

Evaristo will be on stage with special guests including Hannah Azieb Pool, Barbara Blake, Judith Bryan, Jacqueline Roy and Nicola Williams to discuss rediscovering lost and hard-to-find works about Black Britain and the diaspora, by Black women writers on 13th March.  

On 11th March award-winning digital-first creator Grace Victor and Candice Brathwaite, author and founder of Make Motherhood Diverse, share how they grew their careers to encompass writing, fashion, presenting and inspiring others in their journeys to motherhood. They talk to Founder of Black Ballad Tobi Oredein and will also touch on causes close to their hearts such as mental health and maternal mortality rates for Black women in Britain, and Victor’s own experiences of building a relationship with her baby son as she recovered from life-threatening Covid complications. 

Other top-billed events include an afternoon with author and broadcaster Elizabeth Day of the podcast phenomenon “How to Fail”; bestselling writers Lisa Taddeo and Pandora Sykes in conversation about what happens when we are pushed to the brink; the internationally bestselling author Marian Keyes in discussion about Again, Rachel (PMJ), her eagerly awaited sequel to Rachel’s Holiday; and Warsan Shire, the award-winning Somali British poet and activist and celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” and “Black Is King” , who will launch her long-awaited first full-length poetry collection Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head (Chatto & Windus).