Anne Carson wins 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for genre-crossing work rooted in classical tradition

Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy cited her “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

Ingrid Carlberg is permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. She informed Carson by phone shortly before the public announcement on Thursday. “She had time to tell me that she is, for the moment, in Iceland, where she is listening to the wind,” Carlberg said. Carson was taken by surprise. She was very happy. “I could hear that in her voice,” Carlberg added. After the announcement, Carson spoke to Icelandic broadcaster RUV. “Crazy. I think they’re all crazy … Well, you know, it’s crazy,” she said.

A method rooted in words

Anders Olsson is chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature. He said Carson had “broken away from lyrical poetry bound to the narrative self and inspired new forms of contemporary literature.” Her method, he said, leads to “playful and ironic works that move not only between classical and modern poetry but also between different genres and artforms.” The Academy noted that almost all Carson’s literary production has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning. Carson has identified the etymology of words as the starting point for all her work. The Academy also said her translations from Classical Greek may be regarded as independent works in their own right. In a 2016 interview, Carson explained her attraction to ancient Greek: “The Greek language seems different than other languages … it seems, somehow, more original, more like being in the morning of language.” Olsson added that her collaborations with visual artists and choreographers and with opera and theatre directors demonstrate the freedom with which she relates to literary expectations and rule systems. It is this freedom, he said, that lies behind the outstanding importance her work since the 1990s has had for the international art and literature scene.

Carson was born in Toronto in 1950. She is 76. She has been a professor of classics for more than 30 years, having taught at Princeton, New York University, and McGill University in Montreal. Her courses covered translation, artistic collaboration, and the classics. Her work draws heavily on ancient Greek literature and mythology, and blurs the lines between poetry, fiction, and scholarship. She has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. Her work has attracted praise from fellow writers, including Susan Sontag, who once said: “She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she wrote. If there’s a magazine that has something of hers in it, I buy it automatically.”

A career of restless forms

Carson has written more than 20 books. Some have been adapted into plays. Her first, Eros the Bittersweet, published in 1986, combined literary criticism with an exploration of desire and the ancient Greek tradition. Autobiography of Red, published in 1998, is a novel in verse reimagining the myth of Geryon as the story of a modern teenage boy. The Beauty of the Husband tells the story of a marriage in 29 tangos, and in 2001 made Carson the first woman to win the TS Eliot prize. Men in the Off Hours, which combined verse essays, poems, epitaphs, and prose about artists and historical figures, won the inaugural Griffin poetry prize the same year. Decreation brought together poetry, essays, and an opera. The Glass Essay is among her notable works. Nox, published in 2010, takes the form of an accordion-fold box reproducing a notebook Carson made after the death of her brother. Later works include Red Doc> and Float. The Trojan Women, published in 2021, is a graphic retelling of Euripides. In 2019, her performance piece Norma Jeane Baker of Troy drew a line between Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe.

The winner receives 12 million Swedish kronor. Carson is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, out of 123 laureates. It is regarded as the most prestigious award in global literature and is awarded for a lifetime’s body of work. The prizes were established in the will of Alfred Nobel. Literature was the fourth of this year’s Nobels to be announced this week. Last year’s prize was won by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai. Carson will formally receive the medal and diploma in a ceremony in Stockholm in December. She revealed in August 2024, in the London Review of Books, that she is living with Parkinson’s disease.