Atwood wins 2016 PEN Pinter Prize

In the UK, the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize has been awarded to Canadian author Margaret Atwood, reports the Bookseller. Atwood will receive the award and give a public address at the British Library on 13 October. Founded in 2009 in honour of the playwright Harold Pinter, the annual prize is awarded to a writer with a body of work that shows ‘outstanding literary merit’, who 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 is shared with an international writer of courage, selected by English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee in association with the winner. Atwood will announce her co-winner as part of her public address. Atwood said she felt ‘humbled’ to receive the prize and that ‘any winner of such an award is a stand-in for the thousands of people around the world who speak and act against such abuses. I am honoured to be this year’s stand-in’.

Category: International news