Poet Louise Glück wins the 2020 Nobel in Literature

Poet Louise Glück has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.

She is the first American woman to do so since Toni Morrison in 1993 and the first American since Bob Dylan in 2016, as the Guardian noted.

The Swedish Academy praised Glück for her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” reports NPR.

Among the 77-year-old’s previous honors: a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a post as US poet laureate.

She has published twelve collections of poetry as well as several essay volumes; notable among them are the Pulitzer-winning The Wild Iris (a poem from which the Nobel committee singled out as resonant) and NBA-winning Faithful and Virtuous Night.

And for those curious, the odds on Glück's Nobel victory were 25/1.

So far, she seems to fit the predictions that after a tumultuous 2019, the Swedish Academy would make a less controversial choice.

That year's selection of author Peter Handke drew considerable criticism after his past denial of the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian conflict and his support of convicted war criminal Slobodan Milošević became more widely covered.

Two members of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize, acknowledged that the writer had “definitely made provocative, inappropriate and unclear statements on political issues” but that his work did no such thing.

Louise Glück in her own words

• Interview with American Poet 

• Interview with Beltway Poetry Quarterly 

• Interview with Poets & Writers