Canadian Poet Anne Carson Wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature
The Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm on Thursday that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Anne Carson, the 76-year-old Canadian poet, essayist and classical scholar. The Academy cited her "bold and inventive oeuvre" that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, "has created new forms for contemporary literature." Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson trained in classics at the University of Toronto and went on to teach at McGill University, the University of Michigan and Princeton, among others. She is the second Canadian to win the prize, after Alice Munro in 2013, and the 19th woman among 123 literature laureates. Carson's writing moves between poetry, essay, fiction and translation, drawing on Greek and Roman literature throughout. Her breakthrough, Autobiography of Red (1998), turns the Greek monster Geryon into a modern teenager in a story of growing up and first love; The Beauty of the Husband (2001) and Nox (2010), an elegy for her brother, are also widely acclaimed. Her other works include Decreation (2006), collecting her translations of four Euripides tragedies, and Float (2016), a boxed set of 22 chapbooks that can be read in any order; she has also collaborated widely with visual artists, choreographers, and opera and theater directors. The Academy regards her translations of Sappho, Euripides and Sophocles as independent works of literature in their own right. Ingrid Carlberg, the Academy's permanent secretary, said Carson was at home in Iceland "listening to the wind" when the call came, and was taken by surprise. Carson joked to Icelandic media that the news was crazy and that she would put a sticker on the front of her book. The prize is worth 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million) and will be presented in Stockholm on December 10. Before the Nobel, Carson had already received a MacArthur "genius" grant, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Still to come this Nobel season are the Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize next Monday. (Compiled by GSM from Reuters and AP reporting.)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 摄影：Jay Dixit 2024年美国国家图书奖现场，经维基共享资源（CC BY-SA 4.0）/ Photo by Jay Dixit at the 2024 National Book Awards, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
