Canadian poet Anne Carson wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature this year goes to Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy has announced. The academy described her output as bold and inventive, saying it has created new forms for contemporary literature through a playful dialogue with the classical tradition.

The author and her work

Carson was born in Toronto in 1950. She is known for writing that moves freely between poetry, prose and translation, often drawing on the literature and mythology of ancient Greece. Her first book, Eros the Bittersweet, appeared in 1986 and blended literary criticism with a reflection on desire and the Greek tradition.

Her best-known title is Autobiography of Red, a 1998 verse novel inspired by fragments from the ancient poet Stesichorus. It retells the myth of Geryon, the red-winged monster slain by Herakles, as the story of a modern teenage boy coping with heartbreak and desire.

Honours and form

In 2001 Carson became the first woman to win the TS Eliot prize, for The Beauty of the Husband. She has also received Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. Men in the Off Hours won the inaugural Griffin poetry prize in 2001. Nox, published in 2010, takes the form of an accordion-fold box holding a reproduction of a notebook she made after her brother's death. Later works include Red Doc> and Float.

Fellow writers have also praised her; Susan Sontag said she would read anything Carson wrote.

About the prize

The literature prize has been awarded 118 times since 1901. Recent laureates include Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. Last year's winner was Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai. Carson, 76, will formally receive her medal and diploma at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.