Alice Munro (1931 ‒ 2024)

Alice Munro

Alice Munro was an internationally recognized short story writer. Born in Wingham, Ontario, Munro began writing as a teenager and published her first story while studying at the University of Western Ontario. She eventually abandoned her studies and moved to Vancouver, where some of her stories are set. Munro's first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), was widely acclaimed and won the Governor General's Award. Her next book, Lives of Girls and Women (1971) was met with similarly high praise. In 1976, she moved to Clinton, Ontario, near her hometown, an area of Southwestern Ontario often featured in her stories. Throughout her career, Munro received three Governor General's Awards, two Giller Prizes and the Man Booker International Prize. She made history in 2013 when she became the first Canadian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Known for illuminating the emotional complexities of everyday life, Munro shared pieces of her own life between the lines of her prose.

“I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for.
But what there is time for is looking out the window.”

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