Writer, academic, and feminist critic Jacqueline Rose has won the PEN Pinter Prize 2026, awarded annually to a writer resident in the U.K., the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth or former Commonwealth who, "in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel speech, 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.' "
Rose will be honored on October 8 during a ceremony at the British Library. The award will be shared with the PEN Pinter Prize Writer of Courage 2026--selected by Rose--who is active in defense of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty.
"I never imagined I would join such illustrious and courageous company, those who in past years have received this prize, and the PEN movement in its ongoing struggle against oppression and injustice," Rose said. "I am honoured to join their ranks at a time when racial and sexual violence, state torture, and daily violations of international humanitarian law, from Gaza to Ukraine and Sudan, cast their shadow across a shrinking planet. This prize will help me to speak out more boldly, and go some way to meet the self-reproach: Why has horror been given free rein? What more could I have done, and still do, to help create a fairer world?"
Judge and chair of English PEN Ruth Borthwick said: "As we face a world in crisis, on so many levels, we need Jacqueline Rose's thoughtful and incisive analysis to cut through the suffocating layers of obfuscation and denial that beset us, so that we can understand our common humanity and make sense of the world we all inhabit.... Jacqueline Rose is a dazzling winner of the PEN Pinter Prize 2026."
Judge Tanika Gupta called Rose "one of the great intellectuals of the past 50 years, a writer whose thought moves with rare depth, clarity, and grace.... As public discourse contracts and courage grows scarce, her voice remains a beacon of brave, ethically serious thinking--a reminder of what it means to write fearlessly in full view of the world."
Prize judge Will Harris added that "Rose's work insists that truth can only be found by looking more closely at what we fear, at what makes us vulnerable, and by tracing the connections between our hidden desires and shared histories. To read Rose is to be confronted by the depredations of our time, but also to find a way through them."