Celebrated poet and children's author Michael Rosen has scooped a literary prize for his "rare gift" of addressing "the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour and hope".

Judges of the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize also said the Muswell Hill writer was "fearless in holding power to account".

The 77-year-old, who appeared on BBC One's Repair Shop this week speaking about surviving an eight-week induced coma after contracting Covid, will collect the award at a ceremony at The British Library in October. The prize will be shared with a 'Writer of Courage' who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at risk to their safety.

The Going on a Bear Hunt writer will select his co-winner from a shortlist forwarded by the human rights charity, which defends freedom of expression worldwide.

Ham & High: Michael Rosen joins Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood in winning the English PEN Pinter prize.Michael Rosen joins Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood in winning the English PEN Pinter prize. (Image: Billie Charity/Hay Festival)

Harrow-born Rosen, who joins past winners including Malorie Blackman, Lemn Sissay, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, said he felt "greatly honoured" to win.

He said: "It immediately brings to mind the many people all over the world incarcerated, tortured or executed for being brave enough to write about what they perceive to be injustice. We might say that such punishments serve to prove the injustice that the writers expose, or to show the weakness of the regimes who've inflicted these cruelties, but nevertheless, the pain and suffering is all too real and ever-present."

Chair of English PEN, Ruth Borthwick said: "Michael Rosen is one of our most tenacious and fearless writers and in over 140 books, he has championed a way of writing for children which reflects their everyday worlds, using humour and wordplay to validate their imaginative ways of thinking, which has informed his interventions into the lifeless way that children are taught literacy in schools. Even Covid couldn’t silence him!"

Fellow judge Raymond Antrobus commented: "Michael Rosen – poet, survivor, storyteller, educator, broadcaster, former children's laureate, passionate linguist, gifted humanist, national treasure and ambassador of gibberish. Rosen's remarkable and incontestable impact on English language, literature and literacy is singular and worthy of momentous rewards."

Third judge Amber Massie-Blomfield added: "Michael Rosen has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour and hope. Fearless in holding power to account, his work is nevertheless a lesson in humanity, and how in times of vulnerability we may discover the best version of ourselves."

The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 in memory of playwright Harold Pinter and is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature 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".