The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Canadian writer Anne Carson. The Nobel Committee said the prize recognizes her "for bold and inventive writing that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms of contemporary literature," according to infohub.kz.
Anne Carson is a poet, writer, translator, and scholar of classical literature. Throughout her career, she has combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities. Nearly all of her literary works explore the intersection between a philologist's obsession with words and a poet's pursuit of new meanings. She herself described the etymology of words as the starting point for all her creative work.
According to Deutsche Welle, Anne Carson was born in 1950 in Toronto. She became fascinated with ancient Greek while still in school, and later studied classical literature at the University of Toronto, where she earned her doctorate in 1981. She has taught at universities in Canada and the United States, including Princeton and the University of Michigan.
Carson is known for her experiments at the boundaries of literary genres: her works blend ancient Greek myths with contemporary poetry, philosophical essays, and visual art. She has translated Sappho, Euripides, and Sophocles, and through ancient Greek myths she speaks of modern love, sexuality, solitude, and loss.
International recognition came with her verse novel "Autobiography of Red" (1998). Anne Carson has received numerous literary awards. In 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, given for exceptional creative achievement. In 2001, her book "The Beauty of the Husband" received the UK's T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.
Earlier, it was reported that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientists whose discoveries led to the emergence of optogenetics. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics was also announced: he studies energy in space. And in Chemistry, the 2026 prize went to scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis."