Anne Carson wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Canadian writer Anne Carson, 76, according to the Swedish Academy and reported by ANSA.

The prize citation describes Carson’s work as “bold and creative, which, in a playful dialogue with classical tradition,” has shaped new ways of writing contemporary literature, according to the text released by the Academy.

The award places Carson eighteenth among women honored in the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, out of a total of 122 awards made by the Swedish institution since its founding. The number confirms that women laureates remain a minority share of the overall body of winners, a figure that has historically accompanied editions of the prize and that periodically returns to the center of debate over the composition of the juries and the selection criteria.

The Canadian author’s career stands out for its interweaving of poetry and essay writing, with a constant engagement with texts from Greek and Roman antiquity. It is precisely this relationship with classical sources, reread through an original register, that the Swedish Academy’s citation chose to place at the center of the 2026 award.

The number of women laureates, standing at eighteen out of one hundred twenty-two awards, makes the 2026 edition a further stage in a series that the Academy updates at each autumn ceremony; the prize to Carson adds to previous awards to women without substantially altering the historical proportion between men and women honored in the literature category.

The dual nature of Carson’s work, divided between poetic composition and essay writing, is the aspect the Academy’s citation chose to highlight, together with the constant reference to ancient Greek and Roman texts that runs through the Canadian author’s entire body of work.