American poet Louise Glück awarded 2020 Nobel Prize in literature

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published 8 October 2020

The 2020 Nobel Prize for literature was awarded Thursday morning to Louise Glück, the American poet, "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Glück, an English professor at Yale, published her first collection of poems, Firstborn, in 1968. "In one of her most lauded collections, The Wild Iris (1992), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, she describes the miraculous return of life after winter in the poem 'Snowdrops,'" Nobel Committee chairman Anders Olsson writes, reprinting the poem:

I did not expect to survive,earth suppressing me. I didn’t expectto waken again, to feelin damp earth my bodyable to respond again, rememberingafter so long how to open againin the cold lightof earliest spring –afraid, yes, but among you againcrying yes risk joyin the raw wind of the new world. [Snowdrops]

Glück also won the National Book Award in 2014. Along with her gold Nobel medal, she will receive a $1.1 million prize.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.