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Two Writers Unite Sudan in the PEN Pinter Prize

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Sudanese-born novelist Leila Aboulela has won the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize, and immediately chose to share it with South Sudanese writer and activist Stella Gaitano, who was named the “International Writer of Courage”. The award ceremony took place on Friday evening, October 10, 2025, at the British Library in London.

The annual award commemorates the Nobel laureate and playwright Harold Pinter, and is presented to a writer who possesses a “fierce intellectual determination” and an “unflinching gaze” in their pursuit of truth and justice in human life and society, according to English PEN.

This year’s announcement marks a rare and symbolic moment in the literary world, bringing together two writers of Sudanese origin—Aboulela and Gaitano—who share cultural roots but have followed different paths and experiences. Both were born and raised in Khartoum, and their works explore themes of identity, migration, exile, and the human cost of displacement in the Sudanese context.

Leila Aboulela, who has lived in Aberdeen, Scotland since 1990, is the author of six novels, including “River Spirit,” “The Translator,” and “Minaret,” the latter of which won the Scottish Book Award. She was the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and currently serves as an Honorary Professor at the University of Aberdeen’s WORD Centre for Creative Writing.

Stella Gaitano, born in Khartoum in 1979 to a South Sudanese family, studied pharmacy and works as a writer, journalist, and human rights activist. After South Sudan’s independence in 2011, she moved to Juba, but returned to Khartoum four years later after facing harassment for her outspoken criticism of the South Sudanese government. In 2022, she was awarded a PEN Germany Writers-in-Exile Fellowship and relocated to Germany.

Gaitano writes in Arabic and has published two short story collections and two novels, “Edo’s Souls” and “Ereimi.” “Edo’s Souls,” translated by Saada Hussein, was the first novel from South Sudan to be published in the UK, supported by a PEN Translates grant in 2020. Her second novel, “Ereimi,” has also drawn international attention, with its translator receiving the PEN Presents × International Booker Prize grant in September 2025.

In her acceptance speech, Leila Aboulela said:

“It is an honor and a joy to share my prize with Stella Gaitano, a writer I have long admired and read with deep engagement over the years. Stella is a gifted writer and a brave activist who has faced hate speech and physical threats. Reading her work opened my eyes to the injustices and consequences of war in Sudan.”

Stella Gaitano, in turn, remarked:

“This is not only a prize for courage—it is also a prize for survival. I dedicate it to the brave Sudanese and South Sudanese writers who continue to write through war and in the absence of freedom of expression. I dedicate it to all persecuted writers around the world whose words have led them to prison, exile, or death.”

This year’s judging panel included Ruth Borthwick, Chair of English PEN, poet and writer Mona Arshi, and novelist Nada Mohamed.

The 2025 PEN Pinter Prize highlights literature’s enduring power to break barriers, amplify marginalized voices, and celebrate writers who capture both human suffering and hope—affirming that storytelling remains one of the most vital paths toward justice and empathy in a divided world.