Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious award since Alice Munro in 2013.
The Swedish Academy announced the 76-year-old Toronto-born writer as this year’s laureate on Thursday, recognizing what it called her “bold and inventive oeuvre” and her ability to create new forms of contemporary literature through a “playful dialogue with the classical tradition.”
Carson’s work has long blurred the boundaries between poetry, fiction, translation, criticism and classical scholarship. Among her best-known books are Autobiography of Red, Eros the Bittersweet, Men in the Off Hours, Nox and Float. Her writing frequently reworks ancient Greek literature, bringing figures and stories from antiquity into distinctly contemporary settings.
Educated at the University of Toronto, Carson briefly taught at McGill University in Montréal. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2005, and won the Governor General's Literary Award for Norma Jeane Baker of Troy in 2020.
Carson was in Iceland when she received the news. According to Reuters, when asked how she felt about winning, she said: “Crazy, I think they're all crazy.” She then added, “I'll get a sticker on the front of my book.”
The Nobel committee singled out Autobiography of Red, her 1998 verse novel inspired by fragments of the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, as an example of her ability to make classical literature feel contemporary.
The award comes with a prize of roughly $1.2 million USD. Carson will receive the Nobel Prize at the annual ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
