American poet Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for her “candid and uncompromising” work, which looks unflinchingly and with biting humour at the losses and traumas of family life.
She joins a handful of American poets who have received the prize, which has been dominated by novelists throughout its 112-year history. The last American to win was Bob Dylan in 2016.
She is also one of the few women — the 16th female Nobel Literature laureate.
The Nobel Committee praised Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal” in the citation read during the announcement in Stockholm by Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.