Overview

• The Sudanese-Scottish author was declared the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize winner at English PEN’s summer party in London.
• Judges commended her fiction for its intellectual rigor and compassionate insight into migration, faith and the inner lives of Muslim women.
• Aboulela’s six novels and two short story collections, most recently River Spirit, are celebrated for their nuanced exploration of identity and belonging.
• She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
• Her selection continues a PEN Pinter tradition of honoring writers whose uncensored storytelling confronts social and political injustices.