STOCKHOLM (AP) — Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, a stunning announcement that for the first time bestowed the prestigious award on a musician for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." The Swedish Academy cited Dylan for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Reporters and others gathered for the announcement at the academy’s headquarters in Stockholm’s Old Town reacted with a loud cheer as his name was read out. The Academy’s permanent secretary Sara Danius said Dylan’s songs were “poetry for the ears.”

The Nobel award is the latest accolade for a singer who has come a long way from his humble beginnings as Robert Allen Zimmerman, born in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, who taught himself to play the harmonica, guitar and piano. Dylan is the first American winner of the Nobel literature prize since Toni Morrison in 1993. This year, the prize carries with it a purse of approximately $900,000 and, as usual, inclusion on literature's most illustrious list — the pantheon of Nobel winners. The 2016 laureates will receive their awards—a gold medal and a diploma—at a formal ceremony in Stockholm as tradition dictates on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel.
American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.