Growing Out

A beautiful book. Her writing is just so dynamic and alive – Bernardine Evaristo
It is a fascinating book, both for [Barbara Blake Hannah’s] vivid descriptions of her new life in Britain … and for the painful recollections of the racism she faced … Wide-eyed wonder jostles with a vitriolic anger - sometimes in the same paragraph * The Telegraph *

Barbara Blake Hannah (Author)

Barbara Blake Hannah is a Jamaican author, journalist, filmmaker and cultural consultant. She trained as a journalist, then emigrated to London and worked as a PR Executive for the Jamaica Tourist Board and Government. She became the first Black TV journalist in the UK in 1968, starring in TV programmes ‘TODAY with Eammon Andrews’ and ‘ATV TODAY’, and working as a producer on BBC-TV’s ‘MAN ALIVE’. In 1972 she returned to Jamaica as a PR Officer for the first Jamaican film \“The Harder They Come\” and continued writing articles and books, becoming a Rastafari and articulate campaigner for acceptance of the religion. In 1984 she was appointed an Independent Opposition Senator, the first Rastafari to sit in the Jamaican Parliament. In 2001, she served as a member of the Jamaican delegation to the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, where she was appointed a member of the special plenary on Reparations, after which she established the Jamaica Reparations Movement that led to the establishment of the government’s Parliamentary Commission on Reparations (2008). She presently serves as Cultural Liaison to the Jamaican Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment & Sport, and continues to work in the film industry.

Bernardine Evaristo (Introducer)

Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well as winning the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. In 2025 she was awarded the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in 2009 and an OBE in 2020. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time’s Style magazine. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband.

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