The American poet and Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück has passed away at the age of 80, according to her editor, Jonathan Galassi, who spoke to the Associated Press. Glück won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020 for her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty renders the individual human experience universal," as stated by the Swedish Academy.
Born in New York on April 22, 1943, Glück grew up on Long Island. She battled anorexia as a teenager, a struggle she later described in her autobiographical essay "Education of the Poet." At one point, she weighed just 34 kilograms (approximately 75 pounds).
She overcame her eating disorder after undergoing psychoanalysis.
In her mid-20s, her poems were published in notable magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. She made her debut with the poetry book "Firstborn" in 1968.
Over the years, she published a total of 14 poetry collections, often with long intervals between them. Glück considered the English language her gift and felt at home with the written word.
She was the first American poet to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since T.S. Eliot in 1948. Glück also taught English at Yale University for many years and had also taught at Stanford University.
She was married twice and had a son, Noah, with her second husband, John Darnow, from whom she later divorced.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, she received the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry book "The Wild Iris" in 1993.
