Louise Glück, an adjunct professor of English at Yale University, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature from the Royal Swedish National Academy. She is the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature since Toni Morrison in 1993. Overall, 16 women have won the Nobel Prize in literature. Professor Glück will receive a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor, with a value of about $1.1 million.
Glück, who has taught at Yale since 2004, has published 12 collections of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris (Ecco Press) and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1985 for The Triumph of Achilles (Ecco Press).
The academy noted that her poems and volumes of essays on poetry “are characterized by a striving for clarity.” The themes of childhood and family life, including the relationship between parents and siblings, are common in her work. “In her poems, the self listens for what is left of its dreams and delusions, and nobody can be harder than she in confronting the illusions of the self,” said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee.
Professor Gluck is the former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She attended both Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.