Carol Ann Duffy wins Pen Pinter Prize The Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will be awarded the 2012 Pen Pinter Prize for outstanding contribution to literature. The prize, which will be presented to her at the British Library on October 8, was set up in the name of playwright and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter and aims to highlight freedom of expression. After she was appointed the first female Laureate in 2009, Duffy published "Politics," an attack on the fading Labour Government of the time, and she has also written poems such as "Atlas," about climate change and one in memory of Stephen Lawrence. When her poem "Education for Leisure" was taken off the school syllabus over fears it condoned knife crime she responded with a biting poem, "Mrs Schofield's GCSE." She has also praised texting and social networks like Facebook for encouraging poetic skills. "I am hugely honoured and moved to receive an award which commemorates one of the greatest English writers of the 20th Century," said Duffy. Lady Fraser was joined on the judging panel by Sir David Hare, Lord Melvyn Bragg and novelists Dame Margaret Drabble and Gillian Slovo, president of English Pen, an organisation that promotes free speech. The previous winners of the prize, which was set up in 2009, were Sir David Hare, Hanif Kureishi and Tony Harrison. Duffy shares her prize with a non-British writer who has been persecuted for his or her views. She will select this writer along with English Pen. Not everyone is a fan of Duffy, however. Sir Geoffrey Hill, the Oxford Professor of Poetry, lambasted her in a lecture earlier this year. He said one of her poems "could be easily mistaken for a first effort by one of the young people she wishes to encourage" and that "he would not myself have the moral courage to write so."