Anne Carson wins 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature to Canadian writer Anne Carson. The announcement dates back to October 8, but the story had not yet been reported in the pages of this newspaper: we are covering it today as a new story, drawing on the available dossier.

Carson, 76, is known for works such as her translation of Sappho’s fragments and for the verse novel “Autobiography of Red”. She was also the first woman in history to win the T.S. Eliot Prize, for the work “The Beauty of the Husband”.

Among the favorites ahead of the announcement according to bookmakers was also Chinese writer Can Xue, who did not receive the recognition.

The Nobel committee’s citation, made public through Russian-language sources reporting on the official announcement, describes Carson’s work as dedicated to the meeting between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s search for new meanings. The committee also justified the award by recognizing the author “for a bold and innovative body of work” (transl. from Russian).

Carson’s work is part of a path that has for decades intertwined classical philology — her training includes the study of Ancient Greek, which underlies her translation of Sappho’s fragments — with forms of experimental writing that combine poetry, essay and verse narrative, as shown by the very structure of “Autobiography of Red”.

The recognition of the T.S. Eliot Prize, previously awarded for “The Beauty of the Husband”, had already marked the author as a figure capable of renewing traditional forms of poetry, ahead of this further recognition granted by the Swedish Academy.

The Academy’s choice also confirms a trend observable in recent years in the prize: the recognition of literary paths that move at the margins of traditional genres, between essay writing, translation and poetry, rather than works that fit into a single category. Carson has been publishing for over three decades, with a body of work ranging from critical essays to plays, maintaining as a common thread a constant relationship with the texts of Greek antiquity, which she has translated and reinterpreted in contemporary forms.