Agency’s Report
Canadian poet, translator and classical scholar Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday, October 8.
The Academy recognised the 76-year-old for her “bold and inventive” body of work, praising its “playful dialogue” with classical literature and its creation of new literary forms. Carson becomes the second Canadian to receive the prize, following Alice Munro’s win in 2013.
Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson studied Classics at the University of Toronto, completing her doctoral thesis in 1981. She has taught at several universities and built a literary career combining poetry, essays, translation and classical scholarship.
However, Alice Munro was the first Canadian to have won the Nobel Prize in 2013, while Saul Bellow, who was the second, won in 1976.
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Her writing frequently draws on ancient Greek literature, including the poems of Sappho and plays by Sophocles and Euripides, while exploring contemporary experiences.
Among her best-known works is Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, published in 1998. Drawing on the Greek myth of Geryon, a red, winged monster, the book reimagines the story through themes of love, rejection and growing up.
Her other works include Eros the Bittersweet (1986), which examines love and desire through ancient Greek literature, and Glass, Irony, and God (1995), which contains The Glass Essay.
In 2016, she published Float, a collection of 22 separate booklets that can be read in different orders. Her 2024 book, Wrong Norma, also brings together different forms of writing.
The Nobel Committee described her approach as combining “the philologist’s obsession with words” with “the poet’s desire for new meaning.”
Carson has also collaborated across theatre, opera, visual art and choreography. Her previous honours include the Griffin Poetry Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, becoming the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to receive the award. He remains Nigeria’s only literature laureate.
Nobel nominations remain confidential for 50 years, and writers cannot nominate themselves. Eligible nominators include academy members, university professors, previous laureates and certain literary organisations.
Carson will formally receive the prize in Stockholm in December.
