1 year ago
29
Image source, Getty Images
Rosen joins past winners including Malorie Blackman, Lemn Sissay, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie
Author Michael Rosen has said helium feels "greatly honoured" to person been awarded this year's PEN Pinter Prize.
The grant is for writers of "outstanding literate merit" who instrumentality an "unflinching" look astatine the world.
Known for beloved children's books similar We're Going On A Beat Hunt, Rosen has besides tackled subjects similar migration and the Holocaust for young readers.
English PEN seat Ruth Borthwick called the ex-children's laureate "one of our astir tenacious and fearless writers".
She said: "He is 1 of our astir important modern poets penning for young people.
"In implicit 140 books, helium has championed a mode of penning for children which reflects their mundane worlds, utilizing humour and wordplay to validate their imaginative ways of reasoning and being, and which has informed his succinct interventions into the lifeless mode that children are taught literacy successful schools."
BBC presenter Sophie Raworth reads These Are The Hands by Michael Rosen.
In 2021, Rosen published an relationship of his acquisition of being near successful a coma with Covid-19, erstwhile infirmary unit pinned a 2008 poem helium wrote for the NHS's 60th day supra his bed.
"Even Covid couldn't soundlessness him!" added Borthwick, noting however the judges were "thrilled and honoured" to sanction him arsenic the winner.
The prize was acceptable up successful representation of Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter successful 2009 by English PEN, a foundation that says it defends state of look and celebrates literature.
Rosen, 77, said winning brought to caput "the galore radical each implicit the satellite incarcerated, tortured oregon executed for being brave capable to constitute astir what they comprehend to beryllium injustice".
Michael Rosen's affectional convey you to ICU nurse
Rosen is presently prof of children's lit astatine Goldsmiths, University of London, having served arsenic children's laureate from 2007 to 2009.
He volition person the grant astatine a ceremonial co-hosted by the British Library connected 11 October, wherever helium volition uncover the individuality of an planetary "writer of courage" who helium has chosen to stock his award.
Previous winners of the prize see Malorie Blackman, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Lemn Sissay, arsenic good arsenic Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard and Carol Ann Duffy.
English (US)