Atwood Wins PEN Pinter Prize
Margaret Atwood has won the 2016 PEN Pinter prize, as announced June 16, 2016 by English PEN.
The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit 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’. This year, for the first time, the prize is open to writers from the Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth, as well as from the UK.
Atwood will be honored October 13, 2016 at the British Library, where she will deliver an address and announce the co-winner she helped choose, “the 2016 International Writer of Courage, selected from a shortlist of international cases supported by English PEN. The recipient will be an international writer who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty.”
A limited edition booklet of her address will be published by Faber & Faber and will be made available to the audience at the event.
The 2016 judges were: Vicky Featherstone, Antonia Fraser, Zia Haider Rahman, Peter Stothard, and President of English PEN and Chair of Judges, Maureen Freely.
For more information, see the English PEN website.
