British Library | The PEN Pinter Prize 2023: Michael Rosen @britishlibrary | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 11 hours ago.
This event took place on 11 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
Watch writer and performance poet Michael Rosen accept the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize for 2023. He delivered his keynote address at a ceremony hosted by English PEN and the British Library. The Prize judges praised Rosen’s work, saying he ‘has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour, and hope. Fearless in holding power to account.’
The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature, in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.
Former winners of the PEN Pinter Prize include Malorie Blackman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi.
The prize is 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, was announced at the event.
Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s best loved writers and performance poets for children and adults. His first degree in English Literature and Language was from Wadham College, Oxford and he went on to study for an MA at the University of Reading and a PhD at the former University of North London, now London Metropolitan. He is currently Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London where he teaches critical approaches to reading on an MA in Children’s Literature. He has taught on MA courses in universities since 1994. He was the Children’s Laureate from 2007–2009 and has published over 200 books for children and adults, including the recent bestseller Many Different Kinds of Love and On the Move: Poems about Migration.
English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations and the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 147 centres in more than 100 countries. The charity works to promote literature and to defend freedom of expression in the UK and internationally. Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008) was a Vice President of English PEN. He visited Turkey on behalf of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee with Arthur Miller in 1985 where they were accompanied by Orhan Pamuk
The PEN Pinter Prize is supported by the generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Ruth Maxted.
This event took place on 11 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
Watch writer and performance poet Michael Rosen accept the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize for 2023. He delivered his keynote address at a ceremony hosted by English PEN and the British Library. The Prize judges praised Rosen’s work, saying he ‘has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour, and hope. Fearless in holding power to account.’
The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature, in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.
Former winners of the PEN Pinter Prize include Malorie Blackman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi.
The prize is 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, was announced at the event.
Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s best loved writers and performance poets for children and adults. His first degree in English Literature and Language was from Wadham College, Oxford and he went on to study for an MA at the University of Reading and a PhD at the former University of North London, now London Metropolitan. He is currently Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London where he teaches critical approaches to reading on an MA in Children’s Literature. He has taught on MA courses in universities since 1994. He was the Children’s Laureate from 2007–2009 and has published over 200 books for children and adults, including the recent bestseller Many Different Kinds of Love and On the Move: Poems about Migration.
English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations and the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 147 centres in more than 100 countries. The charity works to promote literature and to defend freedom of expression in the UK and internationally. Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008) was a Vice President of English PEN. He visited Turkey on behalf of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee with Arthur Miller in 1985 where they were accompanied by Orhan Pamuk
The PEN Pinter Prize is supported by the generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Ruth Maxted.
