The Swedish Academy has selected Canadian poet Anne Carson for the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, marking her as the third Canadian-born writer to receive the award.
The Canadian poet and essayist Carson was awarded the most coveted prize in literature for her bold, and creative body of work on Thursday, October 8, 2026.
She becomes the third Canadian-born writer to win the most sought-after prize in literature, following Alice Munro in 2013 and Saul Bellow in 1976.
Carson, 76, is widely recognised for her translations of ancient Greek texts and for adapting them with a contemporary approach.
Carson was born in 1950 in Toronto and earned a PhD in classics and has taught at various universities throughout her decades-long career.
Her work ranges from opera libretti to literary criticism and verse novels such as Autobiography of Red from 1988.
Carson’s most notable works include Plainwater, Wrong Norma and The Beauty of the Husband.
She became the first woman to ever win the TS Eliot prize with the latter in 2001.
The Nobel Prize, literature’s key honour is recognised as the pinnacle of a writer’s career.
The past laureates include the poets W.B. Yeats and Louise Glück, the playwrights Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, and the novelists Han Kang and Toni Morrison.
Carson would get $1.2 million as a prize announced by the Swedish Academy.
Carson has been battling with Parkinson’s disease, which she revealed in an essay in the London Review of Booksin 2024 and said that her handwriting had “disintegrated” as a consequence.
Last year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai, best known for his dystopic, melancholy prose.
The Nobel Prize was established in the will of Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel; the prizes for achievements in literature, science and peace have been awarded since 1901.
2026-10-08 17:32:00
