Bob Dylan awarded Nobel Prize for Literature

Today, the Secretary of the Swedish Academy announced this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. It goes to a poet favored by President Obama and Salman Rushdie, but the winner is still a surprise: singer and song writer Bob Dylan. Asked why Dylan was chosen, the Secretary said, “the times they are a 'changin'…”

We get perspective on the prize and the poet from Carolyn Kellogg, book editor of the Los Angeles Times, and from Kevin Dettmar, chair of the English Department at Pomona College and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan, onstage in Victoria-Gasteiz, at the Azkena Rock Festival in 2010

Photo by Alberto Cabello