This year’s PEN Pinter Prize is awarded to novelist, playwright, and short story writer Leila Aboulela who receives her award and delivers a lecture at this special event.
The Prize is given annually in memory of Nobel Laureate playwright Harold Pinter to a writer of outstanding literary merit, who, in Pinter’s words, 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’.
The Prize will be shared with the 2025 PEN Pinter 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 Leila Aboulela, will be announced at the event.
Leila Aboulela was chosen as the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize winner by this year’s judges: Chair of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick; poet and author Mona Arshi; and novelist Nadifa Mohamed.
The PEN Pinter Prize is supported by the generosity of Faber and Ruth Maxted.