Alice Munro

Alice Munro (née Laidlaw; 1931–2024) was a Canadian short story writer born on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, and widely celebrated as one of the greatest masters of the short story form. She grew up in Huron County, published her first story in 1950, and her debut collection Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) won Canada's Governor General's Award, the first of three she received. She died on May 13, 2024, at age ninety-two. Munro's fiction, often set in rural southwestern Ontario, explored human complexities through meticulous prose, non-linear timelines, and integrated story cycles. Her acclaimed works include Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), Runaway (2004), and Dear Life (2012). She received the 2009 Man Booker International Prize and, in 2013, the Nobel Prize in Literature as a 'master of the contemporary short story'—the first Canadian and thirteenth woman to win the Nobel. Her prose drew comparisons to Anton Chekhov for its epiphanic depth and subtlety.