Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Canadian writer Anne Carson

Canadian writer Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy honored her for her bold and inventive body of work, featuring playful dialogues in the classical tradition, which she said opened up new forms for contemporary literature. The Academy's permanent secretary Ingrid Carlberg said she reached Carson by phone in Iceland, where the author was listening to the wind. Carson was reportedly deeply moved. Carson, 76, published her first book Eros, the Bittersweet: An Essay in 1986. Her most celebrated work is Autobiography of Red (1998), which retells the myth of Geryon in a modern story of unrequited love. A classicist by training, she has translated ancient Greek texts including Sappho's poems and Euripides' tragedies. Carson taught literature at Princeton University, Berkeley, and McGill University in Montreal. The Nobel Prize comes with a prize of 12 million Swedish kronor (about one million euros) and will be presented on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.