We warmly congratulate Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson on being awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy commended her for "her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature." Carson has long been recognised for her imaginative language and virtuosic engagement with literary form, moving between fiction, non-fiction and translation. A classicist and translator, Carson frequently draws on literature and mythology from Greco-Roman antiquity, as in her first book Eros the Bittersweet (1986) and her much-acclaimed verse novel Autobiography of Red (1998). Her work has earned her numerous awards and fellowships. With her 2001 poetry collection The Beauty of the Husband, she became the first woman to receive the T. S. Eliot Prize.

In May 2026, Carson and British artist Robert Currie presented a performance of her text Lecture on the History of Skywriting from her collection Wrong Norma (2024) as part of the Poesiefestival Berlin 2026. The event was organised by the Haus für Poesie Berlin in collaboration with EXC 2020.

A new volume in EXC 2020's con·stel·la·tions series dedicated to Anne Carson is forthcoming.