Nobel Prize in literature goes to Canada's Anne Carson

The Swedish Academy awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature to Anne Carson on Thursday, praising her "bold and inventive oeuvre."

Her work has "in playful dialogue with the classical tradition...created new forms for contemporary literature," said Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the academy.

The 76-year-old writer is a longtime professor of classics, creative writing, and comparative literature at prestigious institutions like McGill and Princeton universities. She is only the 19th woman of 123 laureates to win the award.

What is Anne Carson known for?

Born in Toronto in 1950, her family moved around many small towns in Canada during her youth. She has credited a beloved Latin teacher for sparking her interest in language and classics.

Her first book of criticism, 1986’s Eros the Bittersweet, was published to great acclaim and has had significant influence on other classicists, poets, and even film and television. Carson has also published her own poetry such as the 2001 collection The Beauty of the Husband as well as highly regard translation of ancient Greek poets such as Sappho and Sophocles.

Carson is also highly influenced by the King James Bible, as well as more modern writers like Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. She has received numerous awards such as the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, a MacArthur fellowship, and the PEN/Nabokov award.

Deeply private, Carson often declines to speak about her personal life in interviews and discourages autobiographical interpretations of her work. However, she did reveal in 2024 that she suffers from Parkinson's disease.

Who else has received a Nobel Prize so far?

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their pioneering work on optogenetics, a method of controlling nerve cells with light, which makes it possible to study how the brain works.

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to Francis Halzen, a Belgian-born astrophysicist whose efforts helped demistify a rare group of neutrinos that launched a new era of astronomy.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry went to Henri B. Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan on Wednesday, for solving the longstanding mystery of homochirality in living organisms.

What happens next?

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature receives prize money of 12 million Swedish kronor, equivalent to about $1.2 million. They are also given a medal and a diploma at an official ceremony in December, where they are expected to deliver a speech known as a Nobel lecture.

On Friday, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced, following by the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel on Monday.