Margaret Atwood has been named this year’s recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize, an honor celebrating champions of free speech. The Canadian writer is perhaps best known for her novels “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Cat’s Eye,” “Alias Grace,” “The Blind Assassin,” and “Oryx and Crake.” Atwood is also a poet.

The BBC reports that judges described Atwood as an “exemplary public intellectual,” due in part to her political engagement. The Booker Prize winner is an environmental activist. The judges said, “Her work championing environmental concerns comes well within the scope of human rights… she is a very important figure in terms of the principles of PEN and of Harold Pinter.”

Established in 2009, the annual PEN Pinter Award honors the memory of playwright Harold Pinter, who died in 2008.

Atwood, who said she is “humbled” by the award, knew Pinter and worked with him. She shared, “[H]e wrote the scenario for the film version of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ back in 1989 — and his burning sense of injustice at human rights abuses and the repression of artists was impressive even then.” “Any winner of such an award is a stand-in for the thousands of people around the world who speak and act against such abuses,” she noted. “I am honored to be this year’s stand-in.” Atwood even spoke and acted against sexism at a PEN event. According to Flavorwire, “At the 1986 PEN conference, a committee of women including Atwood drafted a formal statement complaining that of the 117 panelists at the conference, only 16 were female.”

In collaboration with the judging panel, Atwood will help determine the winner of PEN’s International Courage Prize, given in recognition of a non-British writer “who has faced persecution.” Atwood will reveal the winner of that award when she receives her own on October 13 at the British Library.