Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro ( ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.

Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of the short story, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time, and with integrated short fiction cycles, in which she has displayed "inarguable virtuosity".

Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade".

Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario.

Her stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style.

Her writing has established Munro as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction", or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov".

Munro began writing as a teenager, publishing her first story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow", in 1950 while studying English and journalism at the University of Western Ontario on a two-year scholarship.

During this period she worked as a waitress, a tobacco picker, and a library clerk.

In 1951, she left the university, where she had been majoring in English since 1949, to marry fellow student James Munro.

They moved to Dundarave, West Vancouver, for James's job in a department store.

In 1963, the couple moved to Victoria, where they opened Munro's Books, which still operates.

Munro's highly acclaimed first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), won the Governor General's Award, then Canada's highest literary prize.

That success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories.

In 1978, Munro's collection of interlinked stories Who Do You Think You Are? was published.

From 1979 to 1982, she toured Australia, China and Scandinavia for public appearances and readings.

This book earned Munro a second Governor General's Literary Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1980 under its international title, The Beggar Maid.

In 1980 Munro held the position of writer in residence at both the University of British Columbia and the University of Queensland.

From the 1980s to 2012, Munro published a short-story collection at least once every four years.

First versions of Munro's stories have appeared in journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Narrative Magazine, and The Paris Review.

Her collections have been translated into 13 languages.

When Gibson left Macmillan of Canada in 1986 to launch the Douglas Gibson Books imprint at McClelland and Stewart, Munro returned the advance Macmillan had already paid her for The Progress of Love so that she could follow Gibson to the new company.

Film adaptations of Munro's short stories include Martha, Ruth and Edie (1988), Edge of Madness (2002), Away from Her (2006), Hateship, Loveship (2013) and Julieta (2016).

Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario.

Her strong regional focus is one of her fiction's features.

Asked after she won the Nobel Prize, "What can be so interesting in describing small town Canadian life?"

Munro replied, "You just have to be there."

Another feature is an omniscient narrator who serves to make sense of the world.

Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers from the rural American South.

She is also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, and received the Writers' Trust of Canada's 1996 Marian Engel Award and the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway.

Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw in Wingham, Ontario.

Her father, Robert Eric Laidlaw, was a fox and mink farmer, and later turned to turkey farming.

Her mother, Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney), was a schoolteacher.

She is of Irish and Scottish descent; her father is a descendant of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.

From the period before 2003, 16 stories have been included in Munro's own compilations more than twice, with two of her works scoring four republications: "Carried Away" and "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage".

Munro and Gibson have retained their professional association ever since; when Gibson published his memoirs in 2011, Munro wrote the introduction, and to this day Gibson often makes public appearances on Munro's behalf when her health prevents her from appearing personally.

Almost 20 of Munro's works have been made available for free on the web, in most cases only the first versions.

Munro has received many literary accolades, including the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work.

On 10 October 2013, Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, cited as a "master of the contemporary short story".

She is the first Canadian and the 13th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Munro is noted for her longtime association with editor and publisher Douglas Gibson.