The award for Nobel Prize 2020 in Literature goes to Louise Glück for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
Glück is the first American woman to won the award of Nobel Prize in literature. She is 77 years old American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award also for her first poem.
Glück born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on the long island and studied at Columbia University. In an interview with Poets and Writers magazine, she spoke about the balance between her life and work, arguing “you have to live your life if you’re going to do original work”, because “your work will come out of an authentic life, and if you suppress all of your most passionate impulses in the service of art that has not yet declared itself, you’re making a terrible mistake”.
“Snowdrops,” from her 1992 Pulitzer-winning collection The Wild Iris, describes the miraculous return of life after winter. “Averno” (2006) is an interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s descent into hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death. Her latest collection was “Faithful and Virtuous Night” in 2014.
Louise Glück is an English Professor at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and made her debut in poetry with ‘Firstborn’ written in 1968 for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and the National Book Award in 2014.
The prize money for the Award of Nobel Prize 2020 in Literature this year is 10 Million Swedish kronor (£870,000) and was awarded by the 18-strong Swedish Academy to the winner.
According to Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee Glück’s most of the poetry are focused on the theme of childhood and family relationships. Also, she has published 12 collections of poetry and several volumes of essays on poetry.
Announcing the 2018 and 2019 winners last year, the Academy was hoping for an end to criticism, with Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel prize in literature committee, promising that the jury was “looking all over the world” for winners, and moving away from a Eurocentric, male-oriented focus.
This week on Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to American Scientists Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and a British scientist Michael Houghton for discovering about the virus Hepatitis C.