Alice Munro

1931-2024

Canadian writer Alice Munro was a master of the short story and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Growing up in the 1930s and ’40s in rural Ontario, Munro aspired to become a writer and was determined to do so even after having to drop out of college because she couldn’t afford it. Her first book of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968 when she was 37. Acclaim arrived in spectacular fashion and continued throughout her career as she won the top Canadian book award, the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, and the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro died at age 92 in May 2024.

FULL NAME: Alice Ann Munro
BORN: July 10, 1931
DIED: May 13, 2024
BIRTHPLACE: Wingham, Canada
SPOUSES: James Munro (1951-1973) and Gerald Fremlin (1976-2013)
CHILDREN: Sheila, Catherine, Jenny, and Andrea
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Alice Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Canada, a town in the province of Ontario. Her father, Robert, had a fox and mink farm at their rural home for a time. Her mother, Anne, was a teacher. Alice was raised with two younger sisters.

When Anne developed Parkinson’s disease, 12-year-old Alice became de facto head of the household. Still, she found time to read and, by age 14, dream of becoming an author. She won a two-year scholarship to University of Western Ontario, where she studied journalism then English. Unable to afford tuition once her scholarship money ran out, she dropped out in 1951.

That same year, Alice married James Munro, a fellow student at University of Western Ontario, and the couple moved to Vancouver. There, they began growing their family. Sheila, Catherine, and Jenny were born during this time, though Catherine died shortly after birth. Child-rearing offered Alice little time to write, but that ultimately led her to master what became her signature form: short stories.

After moving to Victoria, Canada, in British Columbia, Alice and James opened a bookstore called Munro’s. There, they had another daughter, Andrea. Also during this time, Alice began publishing her work in various magazines.

Munro’s first collection of stories—and first book-length work—was published in 1968 when she was 37. The collection, titled Dance of the Happy Shades, achieved great success in Munro’s native country, and the author received her first Governor General’s Award for fiction. Three years later, she published Lives of Girls and Women, a collection of stories that critics deemed a Bildungsroman, a work centering on the main character’s moral and psychological development.

Primarily known for her short stories about life in western Ontario, Munro published several collections across many decades, including Who Do You Think You Are? (1978); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), which was later adapted into the movie Away from Her, directed by Sarah Polley and released in 2006; Runaway (2004); and The View from Castle Rock (2006).

Munro received her second Governor General’s Award exactly three decades after her first, in 1998, for The Progress of Love. In 2005, Time magazine named Munro a TIME 100 Honoree. “Alice Munro is 73 now, and she deserves the Nobel Prize,” Time wrote. “Her fiction admits readers to a more intimate knowledge and respect for what they already possess.”

In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International Prize, honoring her lifetime body of work. That same year, she published the short-story collection Too Much Happiness.

Munro published 13 short-story collections by her 80^th birthday. The year 2012 brought Dear Life—her final story collection, according to the writer, who announced that she was retiring from writing in June 2013.

In October 2013, at age 82, Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy lauding her as the “master of the contemporary short story.” Munro was the first Canadian woman to receive this particular prize, the first woman to win the literature prize since Herta Mueller in 2009, and only the 13^th female recipient of the literature prize since it was founded in 1901. Before Munro, the most recent Canadian writer to have won the honor was Saul Bellow in 1976.

“It’s nice to go out with a bang,” Munro stated after receiving a Canadian book award for Dear Life. When she was contacted by The Canadian Press about her Nobel Prize win, Munro remarked, “I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win.” The author later stated, “I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you’d got a novel written.”

After divorcing her first husband, James Munro in 1973, Alice moved back to Ontario.

She got remarried in 1976 to a geographer named Gerald Fremlin. For many years, the couple lived in Fremlin’s hometown of Clinton. He died in April 2013.

In the twilight of her life, Munro dealt with a variety of health issues. She had heart surgery in 2001 and was also treated for cancer. The author died on May 13, 2024, at age 92 in Port Hope, Ontario.

• I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you’d got a novel written.
• It’s nice to go out with a bang.
  
• Nobody here cares much about writing. It allows me to feel quite free.
• Fiction is serious business. You really have to think these characters through. You have to think about how people really live their lives and the compromises they make.

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