The 76 year-old poet and essayist was awarded the prize by the Swedish Academy.

Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious award since Alice Munro in 2013.

The Swedish Academy announced the 76-year-old Toronto-born writer as this year’s laureate on Thursday, recognizing what it called her “bold and inventive oeuvre” and her ability to create new forms of contemporary literature through a “playful dialogue with the classical tradition.”

Carson’s work has long blurred the boundaries between poetry, fiction, translation, criticism and classical scholarship. Among her best-known books are Autobiography of Red, Eros the Bittersweet, Men in the Off Hours, Nox and Float. Her writing frequently reworks ancient Greek literature, bringing figures and stories from antiquity into distinctly contemporary settings.

Educated at the University of Toronto, Carson briefly taught at McGill University in Montréal. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2005, and won the Governor General's Literary Award for Norma Jeane Baker of Troy in 2020.

Carson was in Iceland when she received the news. According to Reuters, when asked how she felt about winning, she said: “Crazy, I think they're all crazy.” She then added, “I'll get a sticker on the front of my book.”

The Nobel committee singled out Autobiography of Red, her 1998 verse novel inspired by fragments of the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, as an example of her ability to make classical literature feel contemporary.

The award comes with a prize of roughly $1.2 million USD. Carson will receive the Nobel Prize at the annual ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

Toby Morton

When news recently broke that a former Cornell University student had accused seven men of drugging and gang-raping her at a fraternity party in 2024, and was suing the university for allegedly failing to protect her, comedy writer and internet gadfly Toby Morton jumped into action. He purchased domains for all the men named in the complaint and launched a website to share the story of the woman known as Jane Doe, her lawsuit, and Cornell’s response. “With the story of what happened, the screenshots of the guys saying, ‘free pussy upstairs,’ you know, I immediately went to GoDaddy,” he tells Rolling Stone, referring to a reported detail from the lawsuit. He also acquired domains connected to university officials; the names will all redirect to the main website, TheCornell7.org.

Morton, who once wrote for South Park, has been snapping up domain names to spoof politicians and other public figures with parody websites since 2020. The furor around his fake campaign website for U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (tagline: “Let’s Keep It White”) made him internet famous in 2022; he’s since amassed over a million social media followers on Instagram and Threads.

As public outrage rippled across the nation, prosecutors reopened an investigation into the gang rape allegations in response to Doe’s lawsuit; at the time of the alleged incident, no charges were filed. On Sept. 21, five days after Doe filed her complaint with the New York Supreme Court, the university’s student paper The Cornell Daily Sun published an editorial, “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” naming all seven accused and blasting the university for its response. The piece outlines how, according to the lawsuit, after the alleged assault, the accused perpetrators were temporarily suspended and then offered the chance to ‘mitigate their conduct’ by submitting essays to the school. “Tackling sexual assault as an academic matter… offers no respite to the victims who have undergone physical and mental abuse,” the editors wrote. “This is not a dark chapter in Cornell’s history, it’s a morbid pattern.” Cornell did not respond to a request for comment, but denied that essay-writing was the “sole consequence” offered by the university to defendants in a Sept. 21 statement. The university has since agreed to outside review of its response to the alleged rape, according to a post from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

After Morton’s followers alerted him to the story, he launched TheCornell7.org, posting a statement on the website that “accountability should not disappear when the headlines do.” The site — which he says has gotten more than 5 million hits so far — features photos of the seven Chi Phi fraternity members and the details of each man’s role in the alleged drugging and assault as outlined in Doe’s complaint. Morton says former Cornell students have given him names of others in the fraternity group Snapchat, which allegedly was used to invite more men into the room with Doe. He’s in the process of trying to verify them with the help of his lawyer. He plans to post more information, including quotes from the District Attorney who declined to press charges, as it becomes available. So far he has not been in touch with Doe’s team. “The goal is not to be first,” he wrote on the site. “The goal is to build a record that can withstand scrutiny. This will take time. It will be careful. It will be documented. And there will be accountability.”

Morton announced the website on Instagram, where he goes by the handle @wordclown. His post, addressed to the accused men, tells them he owns domains in their names, and that he’s also going after “those employed at Cornell who gave you a break,” buying up URLs of their names, too. The disturbing details of Jane Doe’s alleged drugging and assault convinced him of the need to keep the story in the public eye. He shares pushback on social media, including comments like: “How do you know if [Jane Doe] is telling the whole truth since you’re just a satirist?”

“I’m verifying documents, photographs, timelines, and records,” Morton replied. “You’re typing ‘But what if lady lie?’ into a website contact form… May you someday encounter evidence with the same enthusiasm you currently reserve for doubting women.” In response to messages telling him he’s a satirist, not a journalist, Morton wrote, “This is true. But this makes me more dangerous. I have no limits. No boundaries. Nobody to tell me I’ve gone too far.”

It’s not the first time Morton has caused controversy. He’s made a name for himself stoking outrage with satirical websites that beat people who fail to secure their domain names to the punch. AttorneyGeneralPaxton.com lampoons Texas AG Ken Paxton as a “Criminal – Adulterer – Racist,” with pages dedicated to criminal investigations into the lawmaker, his extramarital affairs, and the significant racial disparities in his prosecutions of Texas voters. StandWithBooker.com mocks New Jersey Senator Cory Booker for being “tone deaf” by promoting his 2026 memoir with a book tour in March and April, when Congress was in session. He parodied televangelist Joel Osteen with OsteenChurch.com: “God is light; In Him there is no darkness… but in Joel there is dimmed lighting, premium seating, and a three-drink minimum.”

Morton started building parody sites to call attention to politicians in a way that would outlast the social media algorithm. “There were a million jokes and angry posts disappearing into everyone’s feeds,” he says. “A website felt more permanent.” He has tapped into fury at MAGA with sites like DraftBarronTrump.com and TheTrumpObituary.com. After launching the latter site last July (tagline: “A Living Obituary and a Future Memorial”), he found himself explaining satire to law enforcement officers who showed up at his door. “They said, ‘There’s concern about your website about the president of the United States,’” Morton recalls. “I guess they sent local authorities because it wasn’t like the big FBI coming from Washington or anything.” The cops left after Morton assured them that he wasn’t predicting Trump’s death, but he was left shaken by the incident. “It was kind of scary because I knew I was protected, and I didn’t do anything wrong, but there was that little feeling in my gut where I was like, shit, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Morton has created sites to drag White House staffer Stephen Miller (“As Racist as Racists Can Be”) and Hilton hotels for accommodating ICE officers (“aligning comfort with authority”). Predicting that Donald Trump would attempt to affix his name to the Kennedy Center, he snapped up TrumpKennedyCenter.org in August 2025, which he says got millions of views (the site is currently experiencing hosting issues). He crowdsources funding for the sites, occasionally digging into his own pocket to pay for his spoof campaigns, often with accompanying billboard installations. In 2023, he targeted Moms for Liberty with a mobile electronic billboard outside the right-wing organization’s Florida conference. “It had the website name and a Hitler mustache, and it just kept driving by as people were waiting to get in.” A QR code on the billboard took people to the site, where Morton was monitoring traffic. “There were tons of people looking at it,” he chuckles.

As his work started getting more attention, Morton’s focus expanded. “It became less specifically about politicians and more about power and accountability, institutions, and people who take advantage of others,” he says. Eventually, that led him toward stories that affected him more personally, “particularly with survivors who felt ignored.” His first public callout of an alleged sexual offender was in 2025, when a 22-year-old former Brigham Young University baseball starter named Candon Dahle pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a young girl over a period of five years. The judge suspended his sentence and placed him on probation. After Morton announced his purchase of Dahle’s domain name on Instagram, he received an anonymous offer of $10,000 from someone trying to buy the domain name to prevent him from building the website (he did not accept the money). He hopes to have it up soon.

Last summer, after Oklahoma teen Jesse Mack Butler pleaded no contest to raping and strangling two teen girls and walked free without serving jail time, Morton purchased JesseMackButler.org. “Everyone Is In Danger While He’s Free,” a banner says on the site, with a summary of the 11 criminal counts lodged against Mack, and a “What Happened?” page that outlines the assaults according to the families of the two girls. That campaign upset some Morton supporters; one messaged him, “I’ve requested my $200 to be returned from Venmo. You’re straying from politics and going after families of rapists who have gone through the court system. Please stick to politics.” Morton posted it along with his reply: “I’ve requested Venmo return your $200 so you can put it toward a helmet. You appear to be navigating nuance without one. Please stick to simpler activities.”

Morton, 55, grew up in Colorado as the youngest of nine kids. He has no experience as a journalist; since a stint as a staff writer and voice actor on South Park in the early 2000s, he’s mostly made a living rewriting scripts for production companies. He’s currently developing a comedy series based on his online persona, “a single dad who goes after powerful people in the dark.” He points to his five-year-old son as a huge reason he’s driven to hold sex offenders accountable. “Someday, I want to be able to show him what his dad did when he saw something he believed was wrong,” he says. “I’m raising a little boy who is watching the kind of man his dad chooses to be. I want to give him an example worth watching.” Another motivating factor is the sheer number of messages he receives from sexual-assault survivors: “I’ve gotten hundreds of emails and DMs from women trusting me with their stories. It’s been incredibly overwhelming, and it’s also a catalyst to really get this [information] out there.”

He’s never been sued for defamation, but he’s pissed plenty of people off. After he launched EliseStefanik2022.com, a spokesperson for the congresswoman complained to the New York Post that his work is “a desperate attempt to gain acceptance from the radical left blue checkmark brigade.” Meanwhile, his social media followers cheer him on. “Fucking finally a man gets it,” one commenter said on a post about the Cornell site. Asked if he is worried about unleashing a mob, he answers simply: “The mob is already unleashed, despite what I do.”

What started as comic relief has morphed into real activism, which Morton says is gratifying. He doesn’t see the Cornell site as a dramatic departure from his political sites. “To me, it’s the same basic idea,” he says, “which is using satire and the internet to put sustained attention on people and institutions that I believe deserve scrutiny.”

Morton says he’s determined to continue exposing wrongdoing as he sees fit; he’s currently working on a site for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. “I was making fun of politicians, and as things got more serious in the country, I just kept going; the saviors keeping my sense of humor are the trolls.”

Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir has reached No. 1 on the French fiction sales chart, with the Québec author’s controversial debut selling more than 18,000 copies in a single week.

According to GfK data reported by French media, the novel sold 18,256 copies between September 21 and 27, a nearly 46% increase from the previous week. The book has now sold nearly 65,000 copies in France since its August 19 release.

The surge in sales comes as Orélien faces allegations that artificial intelligence was used extensively in the writing of the novel, claims he has denied. The controversy escalated further when allegations of plagiarism involving some of his earlier writing emerged. The Académie Goncourt subsequently removed C’était ça ou mourir from consideration for its 2026 prize.

Orélien had already established himself as one of the season’s major literary discoveries before the controversy, winning the 2026 Prix du Roman Fnac for the novel, which follows a Haitian teacher’s journey through exile and migration.

Orélien has maintained that he did not use AI to write the novel. Meanwhile, questions remain about the reliability of AI-detection tools, with experts and writers divided over what such software can establish.

Evidently, this jump cannot be attributed directly to the controversy, as the novel was already selling strongly before the allegations became public, and the sales figures cover a period that also included its Fnac prize win.

The Montréal-based Haitian author’s press tour in France was abruptly cancelled last week in the midst of the frenzy, and he is now back in Canada.

With the 2026-27 NHL season officially underway, the league is once again trying to grow its market size this year. From attempts to humanize its players through docuseries to letting the players compete in the Olympics again, Gary Bettman’s circuit is using seduction tactics- to mixed results.

After the wild and unexpected success of shows like Heated Rivalry and Off-Campus, hockey has by far become the biggest sport in the sports romance genre, on-screen and in books. For the NHL, that has translated to a new, largely female audience of first-time ticket buyers.To try to capitalize on that hype, the league has launched a campaign called Hot for Hockey, and people have questions.

The activation is a set of 60 to 90 second narrated short stories about real NHL players. Written and narrated by popular romance novel authors, including C.R. Jane, creator of the Pucking Wrong series. Among the announced titles, fans can listen to Jack of Hearts, a story about Las Vegas Golden Knights captain Jack Eichel, or The Storm Between Us, featuring Stanley Cup winner Sebastian Aho. It’s not just players, even mascots are getting their own audiobooks, like the hilariously named The Summer I Turned Gritty.

Obviously, do not expect steamy, homoerotic scenes from Hot for Hockey. While the short stories will play on the tropes of romance novels, they will not feature any actual love stories between players. Rather, the players and the action will serve to help advance the narrative of the stories.

“The hockey romance genre is extraordinarily popular”, league commissioner Gary Bettman said in a press conference. “Not all of it is suitable for every audience or every age group, but for the people who are connecting to it? They’re also connecting to hockey.”

Internet personality Clavicular, the right-wing streamer who turned “looksmaxxing” into a lucrative online persona, is facing criminal charges in Massachusetts stemming from an alleged sexual assault in 2025.

The 20-year-old content creator, whose real name is Braden Eric Peters, was charged with rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse and providing alcohol to someone under 21, according to Massachusetts court records. The alleged incident took place on May 23, 2025, on Cape Cod, at the streamer's parents' house. Peters is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 14.

Peters’ representative has pushed back on coverage of the case, saying the streamer had not been formally served and accusing outlets of exaggerating the status of the proceedings. Peters has denied the allegations.

The charges arrive months after another legal dispute involving Peters and influencer Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza, who filed a civil lawsuit in Florida alleging battery, fraud and emotional distress. Mendoza alleged that Peters provided her with alcohol while she was underage and later had non-consensual sex with her while she was intoxicated. She also alleged that he injected her with Aqualyx, a fat-dissolving substance, without her consent. Peters’ attorney has denied the allegations and said they remain unproven.

It's been a wild year of legal problems for Peters. In March, he was arrested in Florida after authorities accused him of instigating a fight between two women at a short-term rental and subsequently posting footage of the altercation online. Prosecutors dropped those battery-related charges in July, citing insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In April, he suffered an apparent overdose while livestreaming in Florida.

Peters also faced a firearm charge after a March livestream from the Everglades appeared to show him shooting at an apparently dead alligator. He pleaded no contest in May and received six months of probation, 20 hours of community service and mandatory firearms and wildlife-safety courses.

A man places a photograph of Nolan Xavier Wells in front of the podium before a news conference during the 117th NAACP National Convention

A grand jury investigating the death of Nolan Xavier Wells unanimously decided against making any indictments, Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said in a statement Monday night.

The 18-year-old football player from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was with friends on Horn Island, a barrier island near the border of Mississippi and Alabama, when he disappeared on July 4. Two days later, a U.S. park ranger found his body on the island where he was last seen. Wells, apparently, had decided to stay on the island after his friends left by boat. He was last seen around 3 p.m. wearing blue swim trunks and sunglasses.

An independent pathologist found the cause of death as “undetermined pending investigation,” and many questioned whether there had been foul play. The first autopsy was conducted on July 7 by a state medical examiner in Mississippi. It found “there was bruising on the back of Mr. Wells’ head, which was not a fatal injury” and found “no evidence of any fatal injury or organic disease.”

“Jackson County, after a thorough and exhaustive investigation, your grand jury met last week concerning the death investigation of Nolan Wells and unanimously returned a no true bill,” McIlrath said in a video statement on Facebook. “In addition to bringing prosecutions against the guilty, the grand jury must also exonerate those who have been falsely accused.”

McIlrath continued, “There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan’s friends loved Nolan and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that.”

The grand jury report was released on Monday. It indicates that the grand jury issued 132 subpoenas and heard from 43 witnesses, with seven individuals being invited to testify.

“The Grand Jury considered credible evidence concerning the circumstances of how Mr. Wells sustained the injury to the back of his head, but the exact cause of injury remains uncertain,” the report said. “A witness testified under oath that he saw Wells slip awkwardly off the side of a boat around the time of 3:30 p.m. on July 4, 2026, but could not say whether Mr. Wells struck his head during the fall. The witness testified that Mr. Wells continued to socialize after the fall and did not appear injured.”

Former NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick helped fund the private autopsy which was done on behalf of Wells’ family. During his eulogy at Wells’ memorial, Rev. Al Sharpton offered a $50,000 reward for anyone who brings a tip leading to an arrest or conviction in the case of Wells’ death. Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry texted Sharpton during the funeral to announce he’d match the reward. Afterwards, it was announced that retired football player Terrell Owens was adding $25,000, bringing the total to $125,000. “He was not on that island by himself,” Sharpton said during his eulogy. “Somebody saw something or knows something.”

Attorney Ben Crump, working on behalf of Wells’ family, released a statement on X following the release of the report. “The public still deserves a clear account supported by records, evidence, and independent scrutiny,” Crump said. “Nolan Wells’ death still demands answers.”

Crump also called the grand jury’s decision an attempt “to close the chapter on Nolan Wells’ death without getting to the truth,” according to CNN. He added, “Nolan’s family will not rest until we know what happened to him, and neither will we.”

Edward Paltzik, an attorney representing the friends who had accompanied Wells on the boat trip, said on X, “We said it all along: Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo, and Morgan Seymour were always completely innocent. There was never any doubt. They are terrific people.” He added, “I wish to express our deepest gratitude to District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department for their professional, thorough, and unbiased investigation that was unprecedented both in care and scope.”