Michael Rosen has said he is “honoured” to be announced as the winner of a writing prize in memory of Harold Pinter as he is a huge “admirer” of the late playwright who also “spoke about injustice”.

The annual PEN Pinter Prize, established in 2009, will be presented at a ceremony co-hosted by the British Library in October, where the 77-year-old author and poet Rosen will deliver an address.

Winners must have a “significant body of plays, poetry, essays, or fiction of outstanding literary merit, written in English” and be a resident of the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth.

It takes inspiration from the words of Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech in 2005, which called for an “unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world” and “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.

Rosen said: “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.

“We might say that such punishments serve to prove the injustice that the writers expose, or to show the weakness of the regimes who’ve inflicted these cruelties, but nevertheless, the pain and suffering is all too real and ever-present.

“There is also a more personal reason for me to feel honoured to receive the prize: I have been a huge admirer of Harold Pinter’s work since I was a teenager and was fortunate to meet him on some occasions when he too spoke about injustice.”

Last year, British author Malorie Blackman – who held the position of Children’s Laureate from 2013 to 2015 – became the first children’s and young adult writer to be awarded the prize.

Past winners of the award have also included Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Sir Salman Rushdie.

Alicia Keys’ Black Ball – London
Sir Salman Rushdie is a previous winner of the award (Ian Nicholson/PA)

Rosen – who served as Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009 – has more than 100 books to his name including We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, Fantastic Mr Dahl, Sad Book and On The Move: Poems About Migration.

The prize was awarded by the chair of human rights organisation English PEN, Ruth Borthwick, the poet, educator and writer Raymond Antrobus, and the writer and executive director of the international touring theatre company, Complicite, Amber Massie-Blomfield.

Harold Pinter died in 2008.

Ms Borthwick said Rosen is “one of our most tenacious and fearless writers”.

She added: “He is one of our most significant contemporary poets writing for young people.

“In over 140 books, he has 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, and which has informed his succinct interventions into the lifeless way that children are taught literacy in schools.

“Even Covid couldn’t silence him!”

After contracting Covid-19 in March 2020, Rosen spent around 40 days in a medically-induced coma.

He lost his sight in one eye and hearing in one ear as a result of microbleeds.

The prize will also be shared with an International Writer of Courage – given to someone “who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at risk to their own safety”.

Rosen will select the co-winner from a shortlist of cases supported by English PEN, and the recipient will be announced at ceremony on October 11.