The allegedly press-shy Alice Munro was the subject of long features in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail this week, and in the former she turns over another card in the ongoing media parlour game that surrounds the subject of her retirement from writing.

“I feel it’s the right time to stop,” Munro tells the Star‘s Judy Stoffman. Nonetheless, Stoffman wisely leads her piece with a hint of skepticism: “Alice Munro’s new book The View from Castle Rock will be her last — or so she says.”

Regular Quillblog readers will remember that this first came up last spring, when Munro contributed an essay to the anthology Writing Life that strongly hinted she was ready to hang up her quill. The Edmonton Journal went so far as to report that Munro was about to formally announce her retirement, which never happened. And at the time, Munro’s own editors — Doug Gibson at McClelland & Stewart and Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker — were quick to downplay any such talk when queried by Q&Q.

But it looks like Munro will keep, um, strongly hinting. (Though apparently not to the Globe‘s Val Ross, who avoids the retirement angle completely in her own piece.)

At least she’s not organizing multiple farewell tours à la The Who or Cher.

Related links:
Click here for the Toronto Star story
Click here for the Globe and Mail story