Swedish Academy to award Nobel literature prizes for 2018, 2019

The Swedish Academy is to resume awarding the Nobel Literature Prize and will name laureates for 2018 and 2019, the Nobel Foundation said on Tuesday.
The announcement was made after a board meeting of the foundation, which manages the assets endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel who created the literature prize and other awards in science and peace.
The foundation is also tasked with ensuring the standing of the award.
The Nobel laureates are usually announced in October.
In May, the foundation and the Swedish Academy, which selects the literature laureate, agreed that the 2018 prize should be postponed after a sexual assault scandal engulfed the academy.
Alleged breaches of conflict-of-interest rules also resulted in a deep rift between its members.
Since 2018 the academy has sought to regroup.
Academy members are elected for life. One outcome of the 2018 crisis was that the statutes from 1786 were revised, allowing members to leave.
Among the members, who have left was Sara Danius, who in 2015 became the first woman to be named permanent secretary.
In January, poet Katarina Frostenson left the body. Her French-born husband, Jean-Claude Arnault, was in December convicted on two counts of rape, and has filed an appeal.
Frostenson, a member since 1992, has denied allegations that she leaked information about Nobel literature laureates to her husband.
In November, the academy said five external members were to be added to its five-strong Nobel Committee to help select laureates.

The foundation said in a statement that the changes were “important’’ and believed they would help restore trust but added that this would take time.
Academy spokesman, Anders Olsson, expressed relief after the decision and told Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter “now we can work in peace with the prize”.
He said the laureates would likely be announced simultaneously.
The foundation noted that more changes were likely in the academy, including more “openness, for example concerning its finances”.
Term limits for members could also be considered, a foundation statement read.