The Canadian short story writer, Alice Munro, has officially won the Nobel Prize in literature. Munro has long been celebrated for her moving short stories often set in the small towns in Ontario. The Nobel Prize aware is worth $1.2 million and given for a body of work rather than a specific title. At the award announcement, Swedish Academy praised Munro as a “master of the contemporary short story.”
Munro recently said during an interview that she had planned to retire after her 14th story collection, “Dear Life,” was published. When asked if her plans had changed now that she won the prestigious award, she commented,
“I don’t think so, no. I am getting old.”
Not only has Munro been frequently published in The New Yorker, she has been included in Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Awards. In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work. She also is a three-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction, starting with Death of the Happy Shades, her 1968 debut collection.
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” was previously adapted into a film in 2006 called, Away From Her.
Munro is the first Canadian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the 13th woman to have won the award in its history. The Nobel’s official website lists the most popular literature laureates in order of popularity: John Steinbeck; Rabindranath Tagore; Ernest Hemingway; William Faulkner; Gabriel García Márquez; Winston Churchill; Pablo Neruda; William Golding; and Albert Camus.
