At 76, Anne Carson just won literature's biggest prize — surprised, in Iceland

A Canadian poet who weaves Greek myth into verse novels and opera just became the 2026 Nobel laureate in Literature. Anne Carson, 76, was traveling in Iceland when the Swedish Academy's call found her. The prize — 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) — honors her bold, inventive body of work, from translations of Sappho to the verse novel Autobiography of Red. She joins a line stretching from Hemingway to Alice Munro, and the choice celebrates writing that refuses to sit still.