Nobel Committee for Literature

The Nobel Committee for Literature is the Nobel Committee responsible for evaluating the nominations and presents its recommendations to the Swedish Academy, which then selects, through votation, the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[1]

Permanent Secretary Sara Danius announcing the 2016 Nobel laureate in Literature: Bob Dylan.

The committee members – usually five – are elected for three years among the Swedish Academy members, with the Permanent Secretary serving as an associate member. In assessing the qualifications of candidates, the committee invites the assistance of specially appointed expert advisers, which include translators, literary critics, and linguists.^[1]^[2]

Committee duties and deliberations

Every year in September, the Nobel Committee sends out nomination forms to hundreds of individuals and organizations qualified to nominate. Some uninvited nominations from other literary societies, academies, and individuals are also accepted.^[1]^[3] Such forms must be completed and submitted on or before January 31st, the Nobel Committee's deadline for submissions.^[1]^[3]

From February to April, the Nobel Committee screens the nominations and presents a list for approval by the Swedish Academy. Immediately after the nominees are approved, the Committee evaluates and creates a list of 25 to 20 candidates for preliminary evaluation. After the deliberations, the Committee selects five priority candidates that they thoroughly assess specifically on their body of literary work and merits. From June to August, each Committee member prepares their respective findings and criticisms of the candidates.^[1]^[3]

In September, the Academy members receive the Committee members' assessments of the finalists and discuss the literary merits of the different candidates' contributions. Within this month, the Committee again sends out nomination forms for the following year's deliberations.^[1]^[3] In October, days before the announcement, the Academy selects the Nobel laureate in Literature through votation. A candidate must receive more than half of the votes cast.^[1]^[3] It rarely happens that the Academy proposes another candidate aside from the Committee's finalists, which causes distress and conflicts among the members.^[1]^[3]

In 2021 – the year when Tanzanian-born British author Abdulrazak Gurnah won the prize – Committee member Ellen Mattson was asked about what criteria the Committee uses in selecting a laureate, she responded saying:

"It's all about quality. Literary quality, of course. The winner needs to be someone who writes excellent literature. Someone who where you feel when you read that there's some kind of power, a development that lasts through books, all the books. But the world is full of very good, excellent writers, and you need something more to be a laureate. It's very difficult to explain what that is. It's something you're born with, I think. The romantics would call it a divine spark. For me, it's a voice that I hear in the writing that I find within this particular writer's work and nowhere else. And it's very difficult to explain what it is, but I always known when I find it. So it's something you're born with. A talent that gives that extra dimension to that particular writer's work."^[4]

Committee chair Anders Olsson also expressed his thoughts in October 2019 – the year American poet Louise Glück won – of what they look for writer worthy of becoming a Nobel laureate, saying:

"We do have a criteria and the criteria have changed. Now we are looking much more for the global totality. I mean we have, really. It's necessary for us to widen our perspectives more and more. Previously we had a more, let's say, eurocentric perspective of literature and now we are looking all over the world. And also, previously, it was much more male-oriented. Now we have so many female writers that are really great. So the prize and the whole process with the prize has been intensified and is much more broader in its scope."^[5]

Current members

The following Swedish Academy members form the current Nobel Committee for Literature since 2024:^[2]^[6]

Seat No.	Name	Elected	Position	Profession
Committee Members
4	Anders Olsson (b. 1949)	2008	committee chair	literary critic, literary historian
11	Mats Malm (b. 1964)	2018	associate member permanent secretary	translator, literary historian, editor
9	Ellen Mattson (b. 1963)	2019	member	novelist, essayist
14	Steve Sem-Sandberg (b. 1958)	2021	member	journalist, author, translator
13	Anne Swärd (b. 1969)	2019	member	novelist
16	Anna-Karin Palm (b. 1961)	2023	associate member	novelist, culture writer