Poet and essayist Anne Carson wins 2026 Nobel Prize in literature

Poet Anne Carson at the 75th National Book Awards in 2024. Andy Kropa//Invision/AP hide caption

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Andy Kropa//Invision/AP

The Canadian writer Anne Carson — known for her singular approach to classical and modern poetry — was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.

The 76-year-old poet and essayist was honored "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature," the Swedish Academy said in its announcement.

Carson's writing, including The Beauty of the Husband, Autobiography of Red, and Eros the Bittersweet, is eclectic in genre and theme.

Autobiography of Red, for example, is a novel in verse inspired by fragments of a Greek myth, while The Beauty of the Husband is a narrative poem that tells the story of a marriage in 29 tangos.

Carson is also a professor, having taught courses on translation, artistic collaboration and the classics.

In a 2016 interview about her poetry collection Float, NPR's Scott Simon asked the author what drew her to ancient Greece.

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"The Greek language seems different than other languages … it seems, somehow, more original, more like being in the morning of language," Carson said. "And that's partly because the words are new. Those people are inventing ways of thinking about stuff, but also because we have thousands of years of building the words into other things, using their words to build out our words."

On her own approach to writing, she said "with every sentence, there is that attempt to make something new happen inside, moving from this word to that word."

Other recent recipients of the Nobel Prize in literature have included the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, South Korean author Han Kang and Norwegian author and playwright Jon Fosse. The prize has also been awarded to Toni Morrison, Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro.