The Wild Iris, Averno: Nobel laureate Louise Glück’s notable work

American poet Louise Glück was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. She is the 16th woman to win the Nobel prize, and the first American woman since Toni Morrison took the prize in 1993.

The academy gave the award to Glück for her “candid and uncompromising” work and praised the writer “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”

She has written 12 collections of poetry and two books of essays over the career span of six decades. Currently, Glück is a professor of English at Yale University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She made her debut in 1968 with “Firstborn,” and “was soon acclaimed as one of the most prominent poets in American contemporary literature,” the Nobel Academy said.

Here is the list of her notable work:

The Triumph of Achilles: In this collection, divided into three-parts, the Glück explores many themes

The Wild Iris: It was published in 1992, and led her to the Pulitzer award in 1993. It is a collection of beautifully written poems which revolves around universal themes of time and mortality.

Averno: It was published in 2006 and was a National Book Award Finalist for Poetry that year. The academy described the book as “a masterly collection, a visionary interpretation of the myth of Persephone’s descent into hell in the captivity of Hades, the god of death,” on its Twitter handle.

Faithful and Virtuous Night: It was published in 2014 and is considered to be one of the finest work of Glück. It won National Book Award for Poetry in the same year.