Leila Aboulela selected Stella Gaitano as the PEN English Pinter Prize for Writer of Courage 2025 in London, UK, on Saturday, October 10, 2025.
The PEN Pinter Prize is awarded annually to a writer from Britain, the Republic of Ireland, or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize-winning 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’. Some of those who have won it since 2009 have been Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Malorie Blackman, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lemn Sissay, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
On July 9, award-winning novelist and short story writer Leila Aboulela was announced the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize 2025 by a jury of Ruth Borthwick, Mona Arshi, and Nadifa Mohamed for her writing on migration, faith, and the lives of women. Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum and has been living in Aberdeen since 1990. She is the author of six novels, among them River Spirit, The Translator, Minaret, Lyrics Alley, and Elsewhere, Home. She is Honorary Professor of the WORD Centre at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. As part of her award, she would choose the Writer of Courage who would share her prize.
Stella Gaitano was revealed to be the PEN English Pinter Prize for Writer of Courage 2025 by Leila Aboulela at the PEN Pinter Award winner evening on Saturday, October 10.
Aboulela said: ‘It is an honour and a pleasure to share my prize with Stella Gaitano, a writer I have admired and read avidly over the years. Stella is a principled writer and a fearless activist, who has endured hate speech and physical threats. Reading her work has opened my eyes to the injustices and consequences of war in Sudan. She is a wonderful, enriching writer who has already broken new ground in African literature.”
Stella Gaitano was born in Khartoum in 1979 to a South Sudanese family. She studied English and Arabic at Khartoum University and trained as a pharmacist. When Sudan was partitioned in 2011, she moved to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. However, in 2015, Gaitano returned to Khartoum after facing harassment and attacks for her outspoken criticism of the South Sudanese government, which she accused of mismanagement, corruption, and its role in the civil war. In 2022, she was awarded a fellowship from the PEN International Writers-in-Exile programme and relocated to Germany. Gaitano writes in Arabic and has published two short story collections and the novels Edo’s Souls and Ireme. Her first novel Edo’s Souls, translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and published by Dedalus Books, was awarded a PEN Translates grant in 2020 — becoming the first novel from South Sudan ever to be published in the UK.
Stella Gaitano said, ‘I am honoured that Leila Aboulela has chosen to share this award with me. It might seem like happy news, but when I think about how I might not have been here to witness it, it brings tears to my eyes. This is not only an award for courage, but also one for survival. I dedicate it to the brave Sudanese and South Sudanese writers who continue to write during wartime, in the absence of freedom of expression. I dedicate it to all the persecuted writers of the world whose words have led them to prison, exile, or death. Telling the truth can risk such threats. But it can also shake the authority that refuses to accept it, grant light and freedom, and promise a better tomorrow. An act with such power is worth the risk.’
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