Anne Carson Wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —

Poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for, in the words of the Swedish Academy, “her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

We at Deep Vellum and Dalkey Archive Press are thrilled to congratulate Anne on this enormous achievement, a much-deserved capstone to one of the most daring and distinguished careers in contemporary letters. Her most beloved works include Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse reimagining the poem Geryoneis by the 6th-century poet Stesichorus, Eros the Bittersweet, a critical essay examining the concept of “eros” in ancient Greek literature and philosophy, and The Beauty of the Husband, an original poetry collection painting scenes from a troubled marriage. She has translated the major works of Sappho, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides.

We are honored to publish Eros the Bittersweet, Carson’s first book, in which she developed many of the ideas that would define her later career. Eros the Bittersweet is a work of serious and deeply felt literary criticism beloved by essayists, poets, scholars, and everyday readers around the world. It was first published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1998, and reissued as a Dalkey Archive Essential in 2022.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Carson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin. She has also won the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and numerous other awards.

View the announcement from the Swedish Academy here.