‘War lives in me’: Gaza playwright Ali Abu Yasin wins English PEN award

London, United Kingdom – Ali Abu Yassin, a playwright from Gaza who continued writing even as Israel’s genocidal campaign devastated the world around him, has won a prestigious award in London.

“This prize is great not only for me, but for Gaza, Palestine, and all the Palestinian people,” Ali Abu Yasin, who was named on Thursday as “Writer of Courage 2026” by the literary group English PEN, told Al Jazeera.

The 62-year-old began writing plays and mastering the oud as a teenager in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, one of the largest in the Strip and a target of recent attacks.

“It’s how I was born, I’ve wanted to express myself using art since my childhood,” he told Al Jazeera.

After the war began in October, 2023, Abu Yasin stopped writing plays and instead wrote about life under Israeli bombardment.

Abu Yasin said for the first two years, he wrote about the situation in Gaza as Palestinians fled and feared for their lives.

“There was no theatre; it was impossible to have a theatre because Gaza was being destroyed,” the writer said, shaking his head.

Since 2023, Israel has killed more than 74,000 people in Gaza and the majority of survivors have been displaced several times over.

Abu Yasin works with actors who now rehearse their lines in makeshift tents, against the sound of gunfire.

“I was near death four, five times. I saw people around me die. We lived by chance, and those who died, died by chance,” Abu Yasin told Al Jazeera.

“My son was trapped under rubble; my house was bombed. So, during those two years, I was trying just to provide some safety to my family. To protect them from famine. And to document what was happening, so the world can hear my voice before I die.”

After a break, he wrote several screenplays that he hid and carried with him throughout displacement.

In 2004, Abu Yasin began working with the Said Al-Mishal Theatre, a hub for Palestinian culture in Gaza City that was levelled in a 2018 Israeli bombing.

Leading playwrights and theatre directors described the attack as “obliteration of this symbol of Palestinian culture and identity” in a letter to The Guardian newspaper.

In 2008, Abu Yasin began writing the Gaza Monologues, a series illustrating life in Gaza, both moments of joy and of pain.

A few weeks ago, Abu Yasin left Gaza with the support of an artist residency programme in France.

“I didn’t actually leave the war. The war lives in me, Gaza lives in me,” he said.

He has found himself conserving small amounts of water and minimising waste, habits he developed by living through the humanitarian crisis.

The award ceremony aligns with his trip to France, allowing him to attend in person largely by fortunate coincidence. For English PEN, the privilege of an in-person ceremony at the British Library is not taken for granted.

“For many years, writers living in Gaza have been among those with the most limited freedom of movement in the world. We recognise this and the direct impact it has on their freedom of expression,” an English PEN spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Abu Yasin’s recent play, 50 Minutes, was shown in Gaza and tells the story of genocide and mourning. Actors rehearsed in a makeshift tent in a car park, many of them without any previous theatre experience.

Abu Yasin was nominated by the British academic and cultural critic Jacqueline Rose, who won the 2026 PEN Pinter Prize.

The Writer of Courage “is awarded to an author who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty, and shares the PEN Pinter Prize with the winner,” says English PEN.

The organisation is the United Kingdom branch of PEN International, a global association of writers dedicated to “championing freedom of expression and literary advocacy worldwide”.

PEN America, its United States counterpart, came under fire in recent years as some alleged it did not support Palestinian writers. PEN America faced a boycott, leading to the resignation of its president in 2025.

English PEN, which operates independently from the US group, joined PEN International in calling for an arms embargo on Israel and condemning the killing of Palestinian writers.

Rose described his work as “a call for justice, a cry of outrage and a spiritual quest” in a press release.

“He has been the consistent chronicler of the harshness and cruelty of Palestinian existence, and the mentor of young people struggling to pluck meaning from the debris of their lives.”

Rose came to prominence with her 2005 book, The Question of Zion, a psychoanalysis of Zionism.

Abu Yasin has three children and 16 grandchildren. All are in Gaza except for his son, Amjad Abu Yasin, who is an actor in France.

“In Gaza, we have simple dreams. We want to live in peace and to live in freedom. We want the sky and the seas to be open,” he said. “We just want some freedom.”