Named the ‘winner of winners’ of the Women’s prize, Bernardine Evaristo, Maggie O’Farrell and others ask the author about the #EndSars protests in Nigeria, writing about Trump, and the culture that got her through 2020

In your Ted Talk in 2009, you warned of the danger of cultural misunderstandings arising from readers hearing only a single story. Do you feel that in the intervening years there has been an improvement in this regard, or are we still clinging to single narratives? Maggie O’Farrell
I think there is definitely some improvement. Among those who read and those who gatekeep what is read, there seems to be an awareness that multiple and different stories matter. But I worry that there is sometimes a bit too much moralising around the idea of multiple stories. We shouldn’t read or publish a diverse range of stories and writers in order to be “good”, we should do so because it is sensible and should really have been the norm a long time ago.

Do you read your reviews, and if not why not? If you do, do they in any way influence your writing and future books? Bernardine Evaristo
I don’t. And I look away (not successfully) from the nice bits that go on the back of books. I think it’s from self-preservation and from an anxiety of influence. The bad ones will infuriate me and the good might mislead me.