Canadian poet Anne Carson wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

Canadian poet, essayist and classicist Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy announced the award on Thursday, 8 October, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.

Carson, 76, receives 12 million Swedish crowns (about $1.2 million). She succeeds Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who won in 2025.

‘Crazy’

Carson told Icelandic broadcaster RÚV that the win was “crazy”. Swedish Academy permanent secretary Ingrid Carlberg said she had been “very taken by surprise”. Carson was born in Toronto and also spends time in Iceland, where she holds citizenship.

Who is Anne Carson?

A professor of classics, Carson is known for writing that blurs the line between poetry, essay and fiction, often drawing on ancient Greek literature. She has written more than 20 books. Among the best known:

• Eros the Bittersweet (1986), her first book of criticism.
• Glass, Irony and God (1995).
• Autobiography of Red (1998), a novel in verse.
• If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2002), a translation.
• Nox (2010), an epitaph for her brother.
• The Trojan Women (2021), a modern retelling of Euripides.

She has taught at universities including McGill, Princeton, Michigan and NYU. Her earlier honours include a MacArthur Fellowship (2000) and the T. S. Eliot Prize for The Beauty of the Husband, which made her the first woman to win it. She was also the first poet to win the Griffin Poetry Prize twice.

In 2024 Carson wrote in the London Review of Books that she lives with Parkinson’s disease.

Sources: The Nobel Prize, Al Jazeera, Wikipedia.