Gillian Slovo wins Golden PEN award

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/03/gillian-slovo-golden-pen-award

Version 0 of 1.

Novelist Gillian Slovo has won the Golden PEN award 2013, following a stormy AGM at free speech charity English PEN on Monday in which the dominant issue was her resignation as president of the organisation a month before her three-year tenure expired, on grounds of "democratic accountability".

The charity, which defends the freedom of readers and writers around the globe, is seeking to reorganise itself, including tightening up its governance under the directorship of Jo Glanville, who joined in September 2012 from Index on Censorship.

Slovo and deputy president Kamila Shamsie stepped down after a majority board vote against the new proposals was not enough to halt them. Slovo said: "A decision was taken by a majority on the board, and a minority worked in a way that stopped it being carried out. Democratic accountability is important in all organisations, but particularly in one like English PEN. I felt that it was better to step down, albeit a month early, and to let the board sort it out."

Raficq Abdulla, who has become acting president, said: "There are strong feelings about how it [English PEN] should be run, and disagreement about the future direction for management. They [Slovo and Shamsie] weren't forced to step down, I can assure you. We are working actively to sort this out and we will sort it out."

He added that "a delicate legal matter" prevented further open discussion of the situation. "Remember the fiasco with the Poetry Society? We're not like that," Abdulla said, refering to an upheaval at the UK's main poetry body in 2011, when funding was withheld over concerns about how it was being run. "We are saying that we have to get our act together and to get a solution that satisfies everybody," Abdulla said.

In a statement, PEN refered to a "disagreement within the board about the future direction of PEN and its management", and said that it was "actively working towards reaching a consensus on the board which is being replenished by new members, so that PEN can continue its excellent work." Six new board members joined at yesterday's AGM, including Ellah Allfrey, former deputy editor of Granta; Philip Gwyn Jones, who was Granta's books publisher, and novelist Nikita Lalwani.

At the same AGM, Slovo, a novelist, playwright and memoirist, was garlanded with the £1,000 Golden PEN prize, which is voted for by the board of trustees. It is given annually to "an accomplished writer, resident in Britain, whose body of work has had a profound impact on readers and who is held in high regard by fellow writers and the literary community."

Slovo has written 12 novels and a memoir, Every Secret Thing, which told the story of her parents, committed anti-apartheid campaigners Joe Slovo and Ruth First, and became an international bestseller. Her 2000 novel Red Dust won the Prix RFI Temoin du Monde and was adapted into a film starring Hilary Swankand Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ice Road, her 2004 novel set in Leningrad in the 1930s, was shortlisted for the Orange prize.

Previous winners of the Golden PEN include Linton Kwesi Johnson, Margaret Drabble, John Berger, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, Penelope Fitzgerald, Iris Murdoch, and VS Pritchett.

Slovo said: "It's an immense honour to be included in this distinguished line-up. Such a pleasure, made more special because this is the organisation which I value so highly and know so well after my three years as president."

English PEN is the founding centre of a worldwide writers' association, with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. It awards a series of prizes for writing, including the PEN Pinter prize for international writer of courage.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.