Anne Carson, the genre-bending Canadian writer, wins Nobel Prize in literature

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — Anne Carson, the Canadian writer and classicist whose work blends verse, prose and essay with influences from classical myths, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in literature for her “bold and inventive oeuvre.”

Carson, 76, is an accomplished classicist who has taught at multiple colleges in the US and Canada while also producing works like “The Beauty of the Husband,” “An Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse,” and “Nox.” Her distinctive essays, prose and poetry, in which the ancient and modern live side-by-side, have garnered her critical acclaim.

Carson’s “playful dialogue with the classical tradition has created new forms for contemporary literature,” the Nobel committee said in a statement.

The prize, announced at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday, carries a cash award of 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million).

Carson is widely known for hybrid style where she balances multiple ideas, genres and forms. “Almost all her literary production has centered upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning,” said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature.

For example, in “Autobiography of Red,” the work that made her name, her long narrative verse is framed by an erudite, enigmatic discussion of Stesichorus, the Greek poet who inspired her. In Stesichorus’ original myth, Heracles – better known by his Latin name of Hercules – kills the winged monster Geryon and steals his red cattle as one of his 12 labors. In Carson’s 1998 retelling, she recasts Geryon as a “tender ‘hero’ devoted to his mother,” who “having earlier been subjected to sexual assaults at the hands of his brother, falls in love with the smug and boorish Heracles,” the Nobel committee said.

Such a complicated form belies the simplicity of much of the language in it. “Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence.// Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches,” Carson writes. “They were two superior eels//at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.”

Carson was in Iceland, “listening to the wind,” when she discovered she had won the Nobel Prize, according to Ingrid Carlberg, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.

“She was taken by surprise but very happy – I could hear that in her voice,” Carlberg said.

Much of Carson’s early career was dominated by her work in classics – she studied for her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees at the University of Toronto and also received a diploma in classics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Although she published an essay and her Ph.D. thesis in her thirties, it wasn’t until she was 42 years old that her first book of poems “Short Talks” was published. Three more works followed before “Autobiography of Red” marked her out as a critical favorite.

“The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos,” which charts the breakdown of a marriage between two unnamed characters, came three years later. For that work, Carson became the first female winner of the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize in 2001. She is the 19th woman of the 122 individuals who have won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Carson is notoriously private about her personal life, but her 2010 work “Nox” reflects on the life and death of her estranged brother, Michael. It is not a traditional book, as such, but a “box containing an accordion-fold-out of picture, letters and other written texts dedicated to her dead brother,” Olsson said.

Carson has also produced several translations of classical texts and ventured into other artforms, collaborating with visual artists, choreographers, opera and theater directors. The transition into various other artistic fields “demonstrates the freedom with which she relates to literary expectations and rule systems, which in turn lies behind the outstanding importance her work since the 1990s has had for the international art and literature scene,” Olsson added.

Last year, the prize went to László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,” the committee said.

In 2024, South Korean author Han Kang was honored by the committee for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Literature is the fourth prize to be handed out this week, after achievements in medicine, physics and chemistry. The Nobel Peace Prize is set to be revealed on Friday, followed by the winners in economics on October 12.

This story and its headline has been updated with additional reporting.

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