Michael Rosen, the author of more than 200 books for children and adults, has won the 2023 PEN Pinter prize for what judges called a “fearless” body of work that provides a “lesson in humanity.”
Rosen will receive the prize during a ceremony at the British Library in October. Established in memory of English playwright Harold Pinter, the award honours a writer based in the UK, Ireland or the 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.”
Rosen will share the award with a Writer of Courage, who he will select from a shortlist of international writers that have actively defended freedom of expression, often at risk to their own safety.
“I feel greatly honoured to have been offered the PEN Pinter prize,” said Rosen. “It immediately brings to mind the many people all over the world incarcerated, tortured or executed for being brave enough to write about what they perceive to be injustice.”
“We might say that such punishments serve to prove the injustice that the writers expose, or to show the weakness of the regimes who’ve inflicted these cruelties, but nevertheless, the pain and suffering is all too real and ever-present,” he added.
Rosen’s books include the 1989 bestseller We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Sad Book, which explores Rosen’s experience of grief after the death of his son, and most recently Many Different Kinds of Love, which chronicles the author’s near-death experience with Covid-19.
Rosen has “championed a way of writing for children which reflects their everyday worlds, using humour and wordplay to validate their imaginative ways of thinking and being”, said judge and chair of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick.
Alongside Borthwick on the judging panel were poet Raymond Antrobus and writer and theatre director Amber Massie-Blomfield. Antrobus said that Rosen is a “passionate linguist, gifted humanist, national treasure and ambassador of gibberish.”
“Rosen’s remarkable and incontestable impact on English language, literature and literacy is singular and worthy of momentous rewards,” he added.
Rosen was the children’s laureate between 2007 and 2009, and he is currently a professor of children’s literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.
“Michael Rosen has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour and hope,” said Massie-Blomfield. “Fearless in holding power to account, his work is nevertheless a lesson in humanity, and how in times of vulnerability we may discover the best version of ourselves.”
The director went on to call Rosen a “role model” not just for “the many millions of children whose worlds he has had a hand in shaping”, but for “their grownups” too. “We need more like him.”
The PEN Pinter prize was established in 2009. Previous winners include Malorie Blackman, who won in 2022, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Salman Rushdie, Carol Ann Duffy and Hanif Kureishi. Previous Writers of Courage include Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, a Ugandan author who was detained and tortured following the publication of his debut book in 2020, and Amanuel Asrat, who was arrested as part of a crackdown on critics of the Eritrean government in September 2001.
