On the morning of Oct. 8, 2026, Canadian author, Anne Carson was standing in her once-quiet kitchen in Reykjavik, Iceland, when she turned off her ringing telephone. In an interview with Jenny Rydén from the Nobel Prize, Carson’s husband Robert Currie revealed that if it had not been for him encouraging her to return the call, Carson would not have picked up the phone and heard the news that she had been announced the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 123 different laureates 119 times. Each of the prizes has been bestowed because of these laureates’ abilities to cross literary boundaries, and disrupt traditional normatives within society, structure, and identity. This Nobel Prize was announced by Ingrid Carlberg, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy to Carson “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” The news was released at the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement in Sweden, making Carson the 19th woman to receive this prize.
Carson developed a love for ancient Greek translations from an early age. According to the Hamilton Spectator, she was only 15 when she picked up a translation of Sappho’s works by Willis Barnstone. She went on to study at the University of Toronto, where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees, and a Ph.D. in Classics. Outside of academia, Carson published her first book, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay (1986), which touched on the works of Sappho and Plato, specifically their perspectives on desire. Carson addresses the dynamic of desire found in their writing, explaining how the bond goes beyond the traditional understanding of the lover and the thing it loves, to include the object in their way. The meaning behind this can be interpreted as desire being tragic, and that we are not meant to get the things we long for. She used Sappho and Plato’s words from centuries ago to draw these conclusions together into the philosophical essay that makes up Eros the Bittersweet. Similarly, in her most popular novel, Autobiography of Red (1998), Carson uses ancient Greek poet, Stesichorus’ poem Geryoneis, which draws on the tale of Heracles, and depicts the tale in a modern light. The traditional tale followed Heracles as he came face-to-face with the three-bodied monster, Geryon. However, Carson chose to tell the tale from the perspective of Geryon, a modern-day teenager born with a pair of wings. Her novel follows him where he meets a charming “Herakles”, who he falls in love with, before Herakles leaves him, breaking his heart. Carson’s ability to take these ancient Greek texts and display them in modern contexts, including identity and LGBTQ+ relationships, allowed them to resonate with today’s generation. This art of hers was what led her to winning her Nobel Prize.
She draws her inspiration from ancient Greek poet, Homer, most known for his epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. Carson has recommended Homer as the poet to begin with when reading ancient Greek literature. A way that the two poets differ is through their writing processes; Homer’s most famous collections draw on similar themes, while Carson herself has admitted to experimenting with different styles and themes of writing and trying not to do the same thing twice.
Anne Carson is a woman who enjoys her quiet mornings with a good cup of tea, and the pieces of Homer. She never anticipated winning a Nobel Prize in Literature, and yet it was more than deserved for her ability to keep ancient Greek literature current.
Contributed graphics by Emma Li
