The Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 to Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson.
The academy cited her "bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature."
Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson is known for work that moves freely between poetry, prose and translation, drawing heavily on the literature and mythology of the ancient Greek world.
Her first book, Eros the Bittersweet, was published in 1986, combining literary criticism with an exploration of desire and the ancient Greek tradition.
Her best-known work is Autobiography of Red, a 1998 novel in verse inspired by the fragments of the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus. It reimagines the myth of Geryon, the red-winged monster killed by Herakles, as the story of a modern teenage boy navigating heartbreak and desire.
In 2001, Carson became the first woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize for her collection The Beauty of the Husband. She has also been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.
Her books have ranged widely in form. Men in the Off Hours combined verse essays, poems, epitaphs and prose about artists and historical figures, winning the inaugural Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001. Decreation brought together poetry, essays and an opera. Nox, published in 2010, takes the form of an accordion-fold box containing a reproduction of a notebook Carson made after the death of her brother. Her later works include Red Doc> and Float.
Her writing has drawn praise from fellow authors, 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."
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded on 118 previous occasions since 1901. Recent laureates include Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Gluck, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Last year's recipient was Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
Carson, 76, will formally receive the medal and diploma at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.
