Louise Glück wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2020

The poet was the first American to win the prize after Bob Dylan was awarded in 2016

Written by Anagha Subhash Nair

American poet Louise Glück was announced as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature on 8 October, 2020. She was the 16th woman to be awarded the prize and the first American since 2016.

Glück, a professor of English at Yale University, has published 12 collections of poetry and volumes of essays on poetry. According to the official website of the Nobel Prize, she was awarded the prize "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Glück received the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris and the National Book Award in 2014, and was appointed the US poet laureate in 2003. She visited the White House in 2016 to receive the National Humanities Medal from the then-US president Barack Obama.

The highest literary honour in the world has a history of controversy and scandal. In 2018, there were allegations of sex abuse against members of the Swedish academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners.

Glück said that “[her] first thought was [that she wouldn’t] have any friends, because most of [here] friends [were] writers, but then [she] thought no, that [wouldn’t] happen." She plans on buying a house in Vermont with the cash prize of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million).

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