STOCKHOLM, Oct. 13 -- Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Sara Danius, Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, on Thursday in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," Danius said at the Swedish Academy.

"As an artist, he is strikingly versatile; he has been active as painter, actor and scriptwriter," said the official statement.

Besides his large production of albums, Dylan has published experimental work. He has written the autobiography Chronicles (2004), which depicts memories from the early years in New York and which provides glimpses of his life at the center of popular culture, it added.

Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan has toured persistently, an undertaking called the "Never-Ending Tour". Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature, the statement said.

Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, in the United States.