Poet, translator and classicist Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in literature
Anne Carson, the Canadian poet, essayist, professor of classics and translator, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature.
The prize, announced at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday, awarded Carson “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” Carson is the 19th woman to win.
Among Carson’s myriad acclaimed works are her novel in verse “Autobiography of Red” and its sequel, “Red Doc>”; her seminal book of literary criticism, “Eros the Bittersweet”; poetry collections such as “Glass, Irony, and God” — which contains “The Glass Essay” — and the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection of narrative poetry “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”; her haunting accordion-fold elegy, “Nox”; and her widely praised translation of Sappho’s surviving fragments, “If Not, Winter.”
“In 1981, she published her doctoral thesis in classics, and has throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities,” said Anders Olsson, who serves as the chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature at the Swedish Academy, and presented the laureate. “Almost all her literary production has centered upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning.
“Throughout her entire authorship, Carson, with a light touch, explores the possibilities of writing, a process by which the literary sketch has become of particular value for her. In her collaborations with visual artists and choreographers, and with opera and theater directors, she has crossed over into various artistic fields, which has lent her writing a strongly performative aspect,” Olsson continued. “This demonstrates the freedom with which she relates to literary expectations and rule systems, which in turn lies behind the outstanding importance her work since the 1990s has had for the international art and literature scene.”
Nobel committee member Steve Sem-Sandberg said Carson is “an author for our time,” unique in her skill at connecting contemporary ways of living through antiquity. Sem-Sandberg marveled at Carson’s use of the myths, characters, stories and fables from that time, and the way she puts them into a modern context. “The mixture between those two gives an enormous energy to her writing,” he said. “Nobody writes like her, and nobody would even, I think, dare to do this in this way.”
Carson was sipping tea and eating crackers at her seaside home in Iceland — she also resides in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she teaches — after she got the big news. She said she was thinking of ways to give the 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) award away. “We have a friend who needs a house, and we always give a lot to Doctors Without Borders,” she said. She also planned to celebrate by taking a walk through the woods and turning off the phone.
Carson’s initial reaction was surprise. “Who would expect it? For heaven’s sake!”