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Anne Carson Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature!
Aristotle talks about probability and necessity, but what good is a marvel, what good is a story that does not contain poison dragons. Well you can never work enough.
—Anne Carson, from the introduction to Short Talks
Beloved Canadian poet, essayist, and translator 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.” The full announcement can be found on the Nobel Prize website.
Carson’s first full-length poetry collection, Short Talks, was published by Brick Books in 1992 and re-issued in 2015 as the first title in the Brick Books Classics Series. When it was first released, Short Talks announced the arrival of a profound, elegiac, and biting new voice. It now sits comfortably alongside Carson’s other bestselling and award-winning works, and marks the beginning of a monumental career.
As Margaret Christakos says in her introduction to the 2015 edition, “Short Talks is the moment before Carson moves from portraying lyric mindstage to staging encounters between and among characters. In light of this trajectory, Autobiography of Red‘s Geryon was a revelation.”
Brick Books is proud to be one of Carson’s early publishers. Short Talks is Carson’s only collection of poems published with an independent Canadian press, and we’re beyond delighted to see one of our generation’s greatest thinkers and writers recognized with this prestigious award. We’re also thrilled for all the new readers who will discover Carson’s work thanks to her win.
My task is to carry secret burdens for the world.
—Anne Carson, from “Short Talk on My Task”
