(photo: Derek Shapton)
Iconic Canadian writer Alice Munro has died.
Munro, who died on May 13 in Port Hope, Ontario, was 92.
She was hailed as a master of the contemporary short story and was one of Canada’s most famous writers both at home and internationally. Her work was described by American novelist Jane Smiley as “practically perfect.”
She was the second Canadian writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature (2013), the 13th woman to win the award.
Among many awards, her work garnered three Governor General’s Literary Prizes, including for her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) as well as for Who Do You Think You Are? (1978) and The Progress of Love (1986). She was a two-time Giller Prize winner for The Love of a Good Woman in 1998 and Runaway in 2004. Munro was honoured with awards beyond Canada as well, winning the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998 for The Love of a Good Woman and the Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
Munro wrote short stories in the spare time she had while raising her children and keeping house, and sometimes called herself a late bloomer, as her publishing success came when she was in her late 30s and 40s. In a 1990 feature interview, she told the CBC she wrote stories because she didn’t have the time at that point in her life to write a novel, and always thought she would eventually graduate to the longer form. Instead, she continued writing short stories for the entirety of her career and is lauded as an exemplar of the short-story form.
“Alice Munro is a national treasure—a writer of enormous depth, empathy, and humanity whose work is read, admired, and cherished by readers throughout Canada and around the world,” Kristin Cochrane, CEO of Penguin Random House Canada, said in a press release. “Alice’s writing inspired countless writers too.”
Munro’s first three books were published by Ryerson Press/McGraw-Hill Ryerson, then she was published by Macmillan of Canada, before PRHC imprints McClelland & Stewart and Penguin Canada became the long-term publishers of her books in hardcover and paperback, respectively. She published 14 original works of fiction, the last one, Dear Life, published in 2012.
Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. In 1963, after having moved to Victoria, B.C., she and her first husband, James Munro, opened the city’s landmark Munro’s Books. For many years she lived with her second husband, Gerald Fremlin, in Clinton, Ontario – much of her work was set in small-town Huron County – and Comox, B.C.
Correction, May 14: The original article incorrectly stated that Alice Munro is the only Canadian to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saul Bellow won the prize in 1976.
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