Who is Louise Gluck, the poet who won Nobel Prize for Literature?

The poet Louise Gluck has become the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature in 27 years. Also, she is only the second woman poet to win the award after the Polish writer Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Prize in 1996 and the second American to win the award since Bob Dylan in 2016.

She was recognised for “her unmistakable poetic voice, that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal” said the Swedish Academy, which oversees the award.

Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Considered by many to be one of America’s most talented contemporary poets, Gluck is known for her poetry’s technical precision, sensitivity, and insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death.

As reported by BBC, Gluck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris and the National Book Award in 2014.

Her other honours include the 2001 Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, given in 2008, and a National Humanities Medal, awarded in 2015. She was also editor of the anthology The Best American Poetry 1993.