Last month, I had to decide what courses to teach in the Spring Semester of 2027. I wanted to choose a course I had taught before, so I went through my list of past seminars to find one I haven't taught in a while. I last taught a course on verse novels in 2023, so it seemed like a good time to do it again. It will be my fourth time teaching the topic, and one text has always been at the center of every one of the courses: the wondrous "Autobiography of Red" (1998), by Anne Carson. And now Carson has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2026. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 October 2026)