Canadian author Anne Carson wins literature Nobel for 'bold and
inventive' works that blend genres
[October 09, 2026]
By JILL LAWLESS, HILLEL ITALIE and KOSTYA MANENKOV
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won
the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for “bold and inventive” works
that fuse the classical and the modern and blur the boundaries of poetry
and prose.
The Toronto-born Carson, 76, has drawn on themes from classical Greek
and Roman literature, modern influences and personal experience for
genre-blending titles that have ranged from translations of ancient
Greek poets to collaborations with dancers and musicians, including
Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.
The Swedish Academy that awards the prize said she won “for her bold and
inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition,
has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
The permanent secretary of the academy said the author was in Iceland
“listening to the wind” when the panel reached her to notify her of the
honor.
“She was very taken by surprise,” Ingrid Carlberg said.
Asked how she felt about the award, Carson told the Icelandic public
broadcaster RUV: “I think they’re all crazy.” She described the
conversation with the academy as “rather halting.”
“They have the usual questions, and I have no answers,” she said.
She said poetry is “probably more useful than prose right now because
it’s faster, and everybody is in a hurry. So basically I think it’s good
because it’s brief. Except Homer. Homer’s not brief.”
Carson is among the more high-profile recent winners of the literature
Nobel, which often honors authors little known outside of the literary
world and is sometimes criticized for valuing literary experimentation
over the ability to connect with a broad readership.
However, the prize can also introduce readers to writers and works
beyond their own languages or reading habits. Among previous recipients
whose books sales surged: Alice Munro, who won in 2013 and had been the
last Canadian honored before Carson.
Asked how the prize would change her sales, Carson said: “I’ll get a
sticker on the front of my book. Stickers help.”
Works range from classical Greek translations to poetry
Carson's books include “Eros the Bittersweet,” a look at the pleasure
and pain of desire in ancient Greek literature, the verse novel
“Autobiography of Red,” as well as “Men in the Off Hours,” a collection
of poetry and prose that won Canada’s Griffin Prize for poetry in 2001,
and “Norma Jeane Baker of Troy,” which compares Marilyn Monroe and Helen
of Troy.
“Autobiography of Red,” which reimagined the myth of Hercules and the
monster Geryon as a love story, is likely her best known work. It has
sold nearly 100,000 copies in the U.S. alone, according to a spokesman
for Alfred A. Knopf, which published the book in 1998.
She also has translated works of classical Greek literature that, the
academy said, “may be regarded as independent works in their own right.”
They include “If Not, Winter,” based on poem fragments by Sappho,
Sophocles’ tragic plays “Electra” and "Antigone” and Euripides’ “Bakkhai.”
Carson’s award is the latest example of the Nobel academy recognizing
“writers who enlarge our understanding of what literature can be,” said
Laura Jansen, associate professor of classics and comparative literature
at the University of Bristol in the U.K.
“She wrote prose as poetry and poetry as prose, so she’s in many ways so
innovative in her forms,” Jansen told The Associated Press. The academy
recognized "that no one in the English language has been able to do what
she’s done.”
“Economy of the Unlost,” from 1999, sets ancient Greek poet Simonides of
Keos against 20th-century poet Paul Celan, while “Men in the Off Hours,”
published in 2000, “aligns the historian Thucydides with Virginia
Woolf,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Literature Committee.
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Canadian poet Anne Carson, winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in
Literature, performs her work "Antigonick" at the Moderna Museet art
gallery in Stockholm, Sweden, May 8, 2015. (Pontus Lundahl/TT News
Agency via AP)
 Carson won a MacArthur “genius”
grant in 2000.
“With wit, imagination, and a style entirely her own," Carson "has
reimagined the classics. She has brought ancient stories to new
audiences and transformed the way we think about literature,”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney posted on social media.
Carson wrote about her own life and struggles
Carson has taught classics at several North American universities
and has lived in Iceland, where she and her husband, Robert Currie,
were granted citizenship in 2022.
She also has drawn on her own life for works such as “Nox,” which
was published in 2010 and dealt with the decades-long absence and
then death of her brother Michael.
Olsson called it “a creation as sculptural as it is literary, an
epitaph in the form of a box containing an accordion-fold-out of
pictures, letters and other written texts dedicated to her dead
brother.” It also includes Carson’s translation of an elegy by the
Roman poet Catullus for his own brother.
She branched out into graphic novels in 2021 with “The Trojan Women:
A Comic,” created with artist Rosanna Bruno.
Among her most recent work is “Wrong Norma,” a wide-ranging 2024
collection of pieces from publications including The Paris Review
and The New Yorker, accompanied by Carson’s hand-drawn
illustrations.
Also that year, Carson wrote in the London Review of Books about
being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She said a “particularly
mortifying" symptom was that her handwriting “disintegrated.”
“Hard to describe or explain the shame of bad handwriting,” she
said. “Bad handwriting is ugly. Also it is inauthentic. In the sense
it is not you.”
The prize was announced in Stockholm. Carson did not immediately
respond to emails from the AP.
Friday to bring peace prize winner
Three science awards were announced earlier this week. The Nobel for
medicine went to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses
light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award
recognized a scientist’s efforts to demystify a rare group of
neutrinos. The chemistry prize recognized two scientists for
untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that
has been used to develop countless drugs.
This week ends with Friday's peace prize. The Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2
million) per prize.
Carson told the academy in a phone interview that she and her
husband are “thinking of ways to give the money away.”
___
Lawless reported from London. Italie reported from New York.
Associated Press Writer Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this
report.
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