Michael Rosen awarded PEN Pinter Prize 2023

Writer and performance poet Michael Rosen has been awarded this year’s PEN Pinter Prize. Established in memory of Harold Pinter, this annual prize honours a writer based in the UK, Ireland, the Commonwealth and former Commonwealth who – in the words of Pinter’s 2005 Nobel prize acceptance speech – shows a “fierce intellectual determination” to “define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”

The PEN Pinter Prize will be shared with a Writer of Courage: a writer who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty. The co-winner, selected by Michael Rosen from a shortlist of international cases supported by English PEN, will be announced at the event on October 11, 2023.