Margaret Atwood wins 2016 PEN Pinter prize
Source: The Guardian
Margaret Atwood wins 2016 PEN Pinter prize
Canadian author says she is humbled to accept reward and is praised
by judges for championing environmental and human rights causes
Alison Flood
Thursday 16 June 2016 00.01 BST
Margaret Atwood has said that she is humbled to win an award from PEN celebrating her political activism, describing herself as a stand-in for the thousands of people around the world who speak and act against [human rights] abuses.
The PEN Pinter prize was set up seven years ago in memory of the Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, and is given to a writer of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Pinter himself on winning the Nobel, 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 Booker prize-winning Canadian author was picked by a judging panel chaired by Maureen Freely, who said: In a profession dominated by careerists who are content to tend to their own gardens, Margaret Atwood is the shining exception.
She does not just stand up for her principles: in novel after novel, she has put them to the test. What she does as a campaigner has only served to deepen her work as a writer of fiction. She is an inspiration to us all, said Freely.
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Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/margaret-atwood-wins-2016-pen-pinter-prize