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Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2026, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
The 76-year-old writer is known for her hybrid style, combining poetry and prose, as well as contemporary stories with ancient myth.
The Academy stated: “Almost all her literary production has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning. She has herself identified the etymology of words as the starting point for all her work.”
Among Carson’s best-known works are her 1986 debut “Eros the Bittersweet”, a look at the pleasure and pain of desire in ancient Greek literature; her 1998 work, often heralded as her greatest, “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, a queer coming-of-age story that reworks a Greek poem about Heracles; “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos” (2001); and “Norma Jeane Baker of Troy” (2019), which compares Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy.
Her most recent work is “Wrong Norma”, which was published in 2024.
By winning the Nobel Prize, Carson becomes only the 19th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, with recent winners including Han Kang in 2024, Annie Ernaux in 2022 and Louis Glück in 2020.
As of today, the literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 119 times to a total of 123 winners (four literature prizes have been shared between multiple laureates).
Last year’s prize was won by postmodern Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” Susan Sontag previously described the author as “the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse.”
The literature prize is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2026 Nobels in medecine, physics and chemistry.
Each prize this year comes with 12 million Swedish kronor (€1.07 million). The winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the final prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, is to be announced on Monday.
Nobel Prize award ceremonies are held on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.