Alice Munro published her first short story, The Dimension of a Shadow, in 1950. Her big break came in 1968 when her first short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, won the Governor General’s Award in Canada… a prize she would go on to win a second time ten years later, and a third time after that.
Since her writing debut, she has written more than a dozen collection of short stories set in her home of southwest Ontario. Her works are heralded as an insight to the human spirit, wrought with clarity and compassion for our race.
Dear Life, her most recent novel published in 2012, (which is partly-autobiographical) will be her last - at 82, she’s decided that she doesn’t want to spend her remaining time in the solitude of a writer’s life.
This October, Alice Munro became the 13th female to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Peter Englund of the Nobel committee referred to her as a “master of the contemporary short story”. Unable to reach her before the announcement, the Nobel committee left a message on Munro’s answering machine, which went overlooked – when Munro’s win was announced the next night, her daughter rushed to her room to wake her to inform her of the achievement she’d gained with her final book.
“It’s nice to go out with a bang” Munro said.
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