Margaret Atwood wins Freedom to Publish Award at 2025 British Book Awards
The Freedom to Publish Award, given in partnership with the organization Index on Censorship, honours an individual who champions freedom of expression.
Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale and two-time Booker Prize winner, is an advocate for reading as a way to resist suppression of ideas. In her video acceptance speech, she recognized the importance of conversations and open communication in this particular historical moment.
"I cannot remember a time during my own life, when words themselves felt under such threat," Atwood said. "Political and religious polarization, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade. The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years."
She also commended the work of publishers and booksellers as people who spread knowledge, fight polarization and foster dialogue.
"In a free world publishers and booksellers stand for the many," she said. "If free governments and the free human intelligence are to survive, the guardians and transmitters of words in all their multiplicity must be brave. I wish you strength and hope and the courage to withstand the mobs on one hand and the whims of vengeful potentates on the other."
Atwood has written fiction, nonfiction, poetry and comics. She began her writing career with poetry, publishing The Circle Game and winning the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in the late 1960s.
Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Writer in the World Prize.
Her other notable books include the novels The Edible Woman, Oryx and Crake and Cat's Eye, the essay collection Burning Questions and the nonfiction work Survival.
Her memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, will be published in November 2025.
The 2025 British Book Awards also presented major honours to American writer Percival Everett, who won Author of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year for his novel James, and Alexei Navalny whose posthumous memoir Patriot was awarded Overall Book of the Year and Nonfiction Narrative Book of the Year.
The annual awards uplift the book industry, from the authors and illustrators to the booksellers. The complete list of Book of the Year winners is below. The book trade award winners can be found on the British Book Awards website.
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