Everyone loves Anne Carson — even if it took some time for Canada to get her

Carson's work, now Nobel-recognized, has spanned decades Verity Stevenson · CBC News · Posted: Oct 08, 2026 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago Play article Estimated 7 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. Anne Carson, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2026, sits outside her home at Aegissioa in Reykjavik, Iceland, Oct. 26, 2023. (Kjartan Thorbjoernsson/Golli/Reuters) Anne Carson, the 76-year-old Canadian writer and artist who won the Nobel Prize for literature Thursday, has always been unapologetically — and quietly — herself, friends and admirers say.  Sometimes, that has meant not being fully recognized or understood in her own country. Carson's work defies genre, hopping from prose to poetry to essay — sometimes within the same piece. It features imagined conversations between ancient classics figures and modern celebrities, poetry about love and loss and musings on people's (and her own) idiosyncracies. Carson is also a renowned scholar and translator of Ancient Greek, known for her revival of Sappho's fragments, notably in her book If Not Winter.  International awards recognized Carson's talent early on. Her first book, 1984's Canicula di Anna, won the Quarterly Review of Literature's Betty Colladay Award. In 1996, she won the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Two years later, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and, in 2000, a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "Genius Grant." But the lack of Canadian recognition didn't appear to bother her. "I like to live behind the back of following," she told The Globe and Mail in 2000.   "Early in her career, a lot of people didn't get it or want to get it," said Lucille Friesen-King Edwards, who along with her then-husband co-founded The Word, a Montreal bookstore that Carson frequented when she taught at McGill University from the late 1980s to early 2000s. "She's very much herself. She does what she does." Canadian Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in Literature October 8|Duration Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for 'her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new ‌forms for contemporary literature.' Canada catches up Canada eventually caught up, awarding Carson the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize several times, as well as the Quebec Writers' Federation's A. But her work, known for its depth and playfulness with words, punctuation and layout, has attracted both young readers and elder intelligentsia alike — an "if you know, you know" kind of status.