Canadian poet and writer Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work which the Swedish Academy described as bold and inventive.
The award, worth 12 million Swedish crowns (about $1.2 million) and presented by the Swedish Academy, cited the author’s work which has created new forms for contemporary literature through a playful dialogue with the classical tradition.
The 76-year-old writer was apparently surprised by the news. Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, told the press in Stockholm that the writer was in Iceland when she was notified.
“She was very taken by surprise,” said Carlberg, adding that Carson had told her that she was in Iceland, listening to the wind.
Born in Toronto, the writer has Icelandic citizenship since 2022. Her work crosses verse, prose, dialogue and translation and she is best known for her translations of classical Greek literature that have had a significant influence on her work. In addition to literary criticism, opera libretti and verse novels, her work includes the famous Autobiography of Red published in 1998.
The Swedish Academy said that Carson’s literary production has focused on the intersection between a philologist’s interest in words and a poet’s search for new meaning. The Academy also praised the author’s approach to etymology, saying that the origins of words were a starting point for her work. The Swedish Academy also called attention to the fact that her translations from Classical Greek can also be seen as independent literary works.
Carson’s unconventional style is best illustrated by the 2019 performance piece Norma Jeane Baker of Troy that tells the story of Helen of Troy from Euripides’ Helen and the life and image of Marilyn Monroe. The author was among the favorites to win the Nobel Prize, according to bookmaker Ladbrokes.
Carson now joins a list of Nobel Prize winners in Literature that includes international heavyweights such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway. However, the Swedish Academy has been accused of being overly elitist for ignoring literary giants such as Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges.
Meanwhile, it has been accused of neglecting US authors, despite awarding the prize to Bob Dylan in 2016. Defenders of the Academy argued that the prize could also draw attention to lesser-known literary traditions as well as promote wider interest in reading and different forms of literature.
Last year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai.
