Canadian poet and writer Ann Carson has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2026. “For his adventurous and innovative work, which, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for today’s literature,” the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, said Thursday. The award is given by the Swedish Academy and is worth 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million).

Ann Patricia Carson was born on June 21, 1950. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities in the United States and Canada since 1979, including McGill, the University of Michigan, New York University, and Princeton University.

With over twenty books of writing and translations published to date, Carson has received Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, the Lennon Literary Award, the Bay Griffin Poetry Award, the T.S. Elliott Prize, Princess of Asturias Award, Governor General’s Award for English-Language Poetry and the PEN/Nabokov Prize, and was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for his contributions to Canadian literature.

From Classical Greece to Marilyn Monroe…Carson created the world

She is best known for her translations of classical Greek literature, which have had a strong influence on everything from opera libretti to literary criticism and poetry novels such as 1998’s “Autobiography of Red”.

Her style is reflected in 2019’s “Norma Jean Baker of Troy,” a performance piece that mixes the stories of Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe from Euripides’ play “Helen.”

Carson joins such notables as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway as recipients of the award, which often divides opinion among book lovers.

Canadian poet Annie Carson made history

The Academy has been criticized for neglecting some of the greatest writers of the last 120 years, such as Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. It has been criticized for ignoring US writers – although it did award singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 2016 – and for being too selective in its selection.

Its defenders point out that the Academy has elected such popular figures as Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez in 1982 and Doris Lessing in 2007, arguing that part of its job is to highlight lesser-known literary traditions and encourage readers to broaden their horizons.

This award was started in 1901

Begun by the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the awards have been given since 1901 for achievements in the fields of literature, science and peace.

Last year’s prize was won by Hungarian writer László Kraznahorkai, whom American critic Susan Sontag called the “master of the apocalypse”.