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Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in Literature 2026
The Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel prize in literature, the Swedish Academy announced, citing her bold and inventive oeuvre in playful dialogue with the classical tradition.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 8, 2026
• 2 Min Read
The Canadian poet Anne Carson has won the Nobel prize in literature 2026, the Swedish Academy announced, honouring a body of work that spans poetry, prose and translation.
Why the Swedish Academy chose her
The academy's citation pointed to Carson's "bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature".
Since 1901 the literature prize has been handed out on 118 previous occasions. Annie Ernaux, Bob Dylan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk are among those recently honoured. The Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai received it last year.
A career moving between poetry, prose and translation
Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson is known for writing that draws freely on ancient Greek literature and mythology. Her books include:
- •Eros the Bittersweet (1986), her first book, which mixed literary criticism with an exploration of desire and the ancient Greek tradition
- •Autobiography of Red (1998), a novel in verse based on the fragments of Stesichorus, reimagining the myth of Geryon, the red-winged monster killed by Herakles, as a modern teenage boy's story of heartbreak and desire
- •Men in the Off Hours, which combined verse essays, poems, epitaphs and prose and won the inaugural Griffin poetry prize in 2001
Prizes and recognition
In 2001 Carson became the first woman to win the TS Eliot prize, taking it for her collection The Beauty of the Husband. She has also held Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.
Susan Sontag counted herself among the devoted readers of Carson's English-language writing, saying she would buy any magazine that carried Carson's work without a second thought.
Later work and the December ceremony
Carson's later books include Decreation, which brought together poetry, essays and an opera, and Nox, published in 2010 as an accordion-fold box containing a reproduction of a notebook she made after her brother's death. Red Doc> and Float number among her other works.
Carson, aged 76, will formally receive the medal and diploma at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.
