Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.
The Academy recognised Carson for her “bold and inventive oeuvre” and her ability to engage with classical literature while creating new forms of contemporary writing. The prize honours a lifetime of literary work and comes with an award of 12 million Swedish kronor, worth approximately £900,000.
Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson has built a distinctive body of work spanning poetry, prose, translation and literary criticism. Her writing frequently draws on ancient Greek literature and mythology, which she reworks through contemporary perspectives.
Carson first gained significant attention with her 1986 debut, Eros the Bittersweet, which explored desire through literary criticism and classical texts. Her best-known work, Autobiography of Red, followed in 1998. The novel-in-verse reimagines the Greek myth of Geryon, a red-winged monster, as a modern story of adolescence, heartbreak and desire.
Her later works have continued to challenge conventional literary forms. Men in the Off Hours combined poetry, essays and prose, while Decreation incorporated poetry, essays and an opera. Nox, published in 2010, took the unusual form of an accordion-fold box documenting Carson’s reflections following her brother’s death.
Carson, who has also taught classics at universities including McGill, New York University and Princeton, becomes the 19th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature since the award was first presented in 1901.
She will formally receive the Nobel medal and diploma at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.
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