---
title: Bob Dylan Skipped His Own Nobel Ceremony Ten Years Ago, and No Songwriter Has Won the Prize Since
description: Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, ignored the Academy for days and skipped the ceremony. What happened, and what it changed.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-05T13:30:00.027Z
updated: 2026-11-05T13:30:00.035Z
canonical: https://thequantumoflight.com/article/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-ten-years-on
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/unsplash-mrv23xtq42a.webp
categories: Music 
content_type: Feature
publication: The Quantum of Light
schema_type: Article
about:
  - type: Person
    name: Bob Dylan
    description: American singer-songwriter, born in 1941. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition, the first musician to receive it.
    jobTitle: Singer-songwriter
    sameAs:
      - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/facts/
      - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
---

On 13th October 2016, Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature had gone to Bob Dylan 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'. He was the first musician and songwriter ever to receive it. On 10th December 2026, [Anne Carson](https://thequantumoflight.com/article/anne-carson-nobel-prize-literature-2026) will collect the same prize in Stockholm, ten years to the day after the ceremony Dylan chose not to attend.

## The laureate who did not call back

For days after the announcement, Dylan said nothing. The Academy could not reach him, and one of its members, the novelist Per Wästberg, called the silence 'impolite and arrogant'. Dylan eventually told the journalist Edna Gundersen that the news was amazing and incredible, and in November the Academy confirmed that pre-existing commitments would keep him from Stockholm.

## A ceremony without the guest of honour

At the Nobel ceremony on 10th December 2016, Patti Smith sang Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall with an orchestra, stopping partway through when nerves took her words, and apologising before she carried on. At the banquet that evening, the American ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, read a speech Dylan had written for the occasion.

Dylan collected his gold medal and diploma on 2nd April 2017, at a private gathering in Stockholm with twelve members of the Academy and no press. Danius reported afterwards that spirits had been high and champagne had been drunk.

## The lecture that arrived just in time

Laureates must deliver a Nobel lecture within six months of the ceremony to receive the prize money, which left Dylan a deadline of 10th June 2017. His recorded lecture appeared on the Nobel website on 5th June. In it he talked about the books that shaped his songs, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Homer's Odyssey and Erich Maria Remarque's novel of the First World War, and argued that songs are different from literature because they are 'meant to be sung, not read'.

Within days, the writer Andrea Pitzer showed in Slate that passages about Moby-Dick closely resembled the study guide SparkNotes, including a supposed quotation that does not appear in the novel. An Associated Press analysis found more than 20 similar phrases but no copied sentences. Dylan has long defended borrowing as part of the folk tradition, and the Academy let the matter rest.

## Writers took sides

The award split the literary world. Salman Rushdie, Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates welcomed it. Irvine Welsh dismissed it as a nostalgia award, the French writer Pierre Assouline called it contemptuous of writers, and Will Self argued that it cheapened Dylan. Leonard Cohen said that giving Dylan the prize was like pinning a medal on Mount Everest.

## A decade of novelists and poets

Since 2016, the prize has gone back to the page. The laureates have been [Kazuo Ishiguro](https://thequantumoflight.com/article/kazuo-ishiguro-films-klara-and-the-sun), Olga Tokarczuk, Peter Handke, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse, Han Kang, László Krasznahorkai and now Anne Carson: novelists, a playwright and two poets, and no songwriter. There is an argument that Carson's award picks up the thread Dylan's left, since the Academy praised her for creating new forms in dialogue with the classical tradition, and Dylan closed his own lecture by returning to Homer.

Dylan, meanwhile, has carried on doing what won him the prize. At 85 he has spent 2026 on the road with his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, and James Mangold's 2024 film A Complete Unknown, with Timothée Chalamet as the young Dylan, earned eight Oscar nominations. His Nobel medal, collected late and without ceremony, remains the only one ever awarded for songs.

## FAQ

**Q: Why did Bob Dylan not collect his Nobel Prize?**
Bob Dylan did not attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm on 10th December 2016, and the Swedish Academy said pre-existing commitments kept him away. He did collect the prize later: he received his gold medal and diploma at a private meeting with members of the Academy in Stockholm on 2nd April 2017, and delivered his required Nobel lecture as a recording in June 2017, which allowed him to receive the prize money.

**Q: Why did Bob Dylan win a Nobel Prize?**
The Swedish Academy awarded Bob Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition, treating his song lyrics as poetry written to be performed. He was the first musician and songwriter to receive the literature prize. The decision was controversial, with some writers arguing that song lyrics should not compete with novels and poems for the award.