Leila Aboulela Wins 2025 PEN Pinter Prize for Powerful Tales of Faith, Migration, and Identity

Sudanese-Scottish writer Leila Aboulela was named the winner of the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize on Wednesday. Her work explores themes such as migration, faith, and the lives of women.

The announcement was made at English PEN’s annual summer party in London.

Actors Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, 2007) and Amira Ghazalla (Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, 2017) highlighted Leila’s contributions before an audience of writers, publishers, and cultural figures.

The Harold Pinter Prize is awarded to writers who, in Harold Pinter’s words, cast an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and exhibit a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”

“This comes as a complete and utter surprise,” said Aboulela upon hearing the news. “For someone like me—a Muslim Sudanese immigrant who writes from a religious perspective, probing the limits of secular tolerance—this recognition feels truly significant. It brings expansion and depth to the meaning of freedom of expression and whose stories get heard.”

Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and has lived in Aberdeen since 1990, where she began her literary career.

She has published six novels and numerous short stories, which have been translated into fifteen languages as of 2023.

Her literary work is heavily influenced by her personal experiences as an immigrant to the United Kingdom and the challenges she has faced.

Her writing has appeared in publications such as Harper’s Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Several of her plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio.

Leila Aboulela's work has received widespread critical acclaim from readers and literary figures alike, praised for her mastery of both the novel and the short story form.