Anne Carson, the Canadian poet, whose books combine ancient Greek myths with modern stories of love, grief and desire, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.
The announcement in Stockholm on 8 October honoured Carson «for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.»
BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson, «for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.» https://t.co/YRvlRghlGG
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 8, 2026
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Who is Anne Carson?
A Canadian poet, essayist and classics scholar, Carson has taught at universities including Princeton and McGill.
Her books include Eros the Bittersweet, an exploration of desire in ancient Greek literature, and The Beauty of the Husband, which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has also translated works by Sappho and Greek dramatists, according to the Academy of American Poets.
This year’s #NobelPrize laureate Anne Carson was born in 1950 in Toronto, Canada. In 1981, she published her doctoral thesis in Classics entitled ‘Odi et Amo Ergo Sum’, and has, throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities. 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.
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 8, 2026
For readers discovering her work, Autobiography of Red, published in 1998, offers a starting point. Its central character, Geryon, is a winged red monster who finds comfort in photography and falls for a young man named Herakles. The book combines the strangeness of myth with the recognisable experiences of rejection and self-discovery.
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The award carries 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million). The Nobel medal and diploma will be presented at the ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December.
