In The News: Alice Munro Becomes First Canadian to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature!

On Thursday, October 10, 2013, Canadian author Alice Munro became the first Canadian in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This prestigious literary award is given to a writer for a lifetime’s body of work, rather than a single novel, short story, or collection.  During the Nobel announcement, the Swedish Academy declared Munro as the “master of the contemporary short story.” Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy,went on to state that “[Munro] can say a lot in just 20 pages – more than the average novel writer can – but also she can cover ground.  She can have a single short story that covers decades and it works.”

The works of Alice Munro have revolutionized the architecture of the short story and drawn international attention to Canadian literature.  Many of her stories are set in Southern Ontario with complex female protagonists and take readers on a psychological exploration of life’s complexities.  Munro’s modern use of the omniscient narrator, epiphanic moments, and the Southern Ontario Gothic genre – creates literary depth in Munro’s stories and has revitalized the genre’s literary potential.  In Marc Levene’s article “ ‘It was about vanishing’: A Glimpse of Alice Munro’s stories”, which appeared in The University of Toronto Quarterly, reflects her development as an author by providing a comparison between the traditional conventions of Munro’s works that she established early in her career and how they evolve in her later works.

Unfortunately for readers, the 82-year-old author announced earlier this year that after composing fourteen short story collections, her latest work Dear Life, would be her final work.  Nevertheless, the innovation and attention Munro has inflicted upon Canada’s literary landscape will always be reflected in her stories.

Click Here to read the Globe and Mail’s article