Children's author Michael Rosen wins prestigious 2023 PEN Pinter Award for work described as 'lesson in humanity'

The author Michael Rosen, 77, who has written 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.”

The writer, who was born in Middlesex and is a father of four, will be awarded with the prize during a ceremony at the British Library in October.

Established in memory of the eminent 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 even at the risk of their own safety.

Rosen’s books include the 1989 bestseller We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Sad Book, which explores the author’s experience of grief after the death of his son, and most recently Many Different Kinds of Love, which chronicles the prodigious writer’s near-death experience with Covid-19 as well as his ardent support for the NHS who aided his recovery.

Judge and chair of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick said Rosen “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”.

Alongside Borthwick on the judging panel were theatre director Amber Massie-Blomfield, and poet Raymond Antrobus who described Rosen as a “passionate linguist, gifted humanist, national treasure and ambassador of gibberish.”

“I feel greatly honoured to have been offered the PEN Pinter prize,” said Rosen, who was the children’s laureate between 2007 and 2009.

The professor of children’s literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, added: “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.”