Bloodaxe Books

What kind of writer is Anne Carson? Anne Carson’s work spans poetry, prose and essays, often engaging with themes, texts, and myths from the ancient Greek world. Alongside her career as a writer, she is a professor of classics and widely known for her lectures on ancient Greek literature. Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1950, Carson published her doctoral thesis in Classics, 'Odi et Amo Ergo Sum' ('I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am'), in 1981. She later reworked it into the essay 'Eros the Bittersweet', in which she developed many of the ideas about desire that would shape her later writing. For many readers, 'Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse' (1998) serves as an introduction to Carson’s work. Inspired by Geryoneis – the fragmentary poem by the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus – it reimagines Geryon, the red-winged monster slain by Heracles, as a gay teenager with wings who falls in love with Heracles and is left heartbroken. Throughout her entire authorship, Carson has continually experimented with literary form and explored the possibilities of writing. An example of this is 'Float' (2016), twenty-two chapbooks on different subjects that can be read in any order. More recently, 'Wrong Norma' from 2024, consists of a diverse combination of texts with a strongly performative aspect in which Carson crosses over into various artistic and academic fields.

BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”