Alice Ann Munro, née Laidlaw (born 10 July 1931) is an award-winning Canadian short story writer who is widely considered an important writer in that form. July 10 is the 191st day (192nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 174 days remaining. ... 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ... This article is in need of attention. ...

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Alice Munro

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Biography

Alice Munro was born in the small rural town of Wingham, Ontario into a family of fox and poultry farmers. Her father was Robert Eric Laidlaw and her mother, a school teacher, was named Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney). She began writing as a teenager and published her first story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow," while a student at the University of Western Ontario in 1950. During this education she worked as a waitress, a tobacco picker, and a library clerk. In 1951, she left the university, in which she had been majoring in English since 1949, to marry James Munro and move to Vancouver, British Columbia. Her daughters Sheila and Jenny were born in 1953 and 1957 respectively. In 1963 she moved to Victoria and established Munro Books with her husband. In 1966, her third daughter, Sarah was born. Wingham (2001 census population 2,885) is a community located in the Canadian province of Ontario at a Latitude of 43°53 North and a Longitude of 81°18 West. ... Motto: Ut Incepit Fidelis Sic Permanet (Latin: Loyal she began, loyal she remains) Official languages English Flower White Trillium Tree Eastern White Pine Bird Common Loon Capital Toronto Largest city Toronto Lieutenant-Governor James K. Bartleman Premier Dalton McGuinty (Liberal) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 106 24 Area Total... The University of Western Ontario (Western or UWO) is a coeducational, non-denominational, research-intensive university located in London, Ontario. ... Vancouver (pronounced: ) is a city in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. ... Motto: Splendor Sine Occasu (Latin: Splendour without diminishment) Official languages English de facto (none stated in law) Flower Pacific dogwood Tree Western Redcedar Bird Stellers Jay Capital Victoria Largest city Vancouver Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo Premier Gordon Campbell (BC Liberal) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 36 6 Area... Victorias Inner Harbour with the Provincial Legislature in the background. ...

Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), was highly acclaimed and won that year’s Governor General's Award, Canada’s highest literary prize. This success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), a collection of interlinked stories that was published as a novel. See also: 1967 in literature, other events of 1968, 1969 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Since their creation in 1937, the Governor Generals Literary Awards have become one of Canadas most prestigious prizes, awarded in both French and English in seven categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Childrens Literature-Text, Childrens Literature-Illustration, and Translation. ... See also: 1970 in literature, other events of 1971, 1972 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

She and James Munro were divorced in 1972 when she returned to Ontario to become Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario. In 1976 she married Gerald Fremlin, a geographer. The couple moved to a farm outside Clinton, Ontario, where they currently live. Clinton is a town in Ontario, Canada; established in 1831, it has a population of 3,117 ( 2001). ...

In 1978, Munro's Who Do You Think You Are? was published (titled The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flor and Rose in the United States); this book led Munro to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for a second time. From 1979 to 1982, she toured Australia, China and Scandinavia. In 1980 she held the position of Writer-in-Residence at both the University of British Columbia and the University of Queensland. Through the 1980s and 1990s Munro published a short story collection about once every four years to increasing acclaim, winning both national and international awards. Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe. ... The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university with its main campus located at Point Grey, in the University Endowment Lands adjacent to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and another smaller campus known as UBC Okanagan located in Kelowna, British Columbia. ... The University of Queensland (UQ) has its main campus in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, specifically in the suburb of St Lucia. ...

In 2002, her daughter Sheila Munro published a childhood memoir, Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up With Alice Munro. See also: 2001 in literature, other events of 2002, 2003 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

Her stories frequently appear in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review. The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction. ... February 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, with The Battle Hymn of the Republic on the front page. ... Grand Street was an American magazine which appeared from 1981 to 2004. ... Mademoiselle was an influential womens magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. ... The Paris Review is a literary magazine started in 1953 by Peter Matthiessen, Thomas H. Guinzburg, and Harold L. Humes, and edited until his death in 2003 by George Plimpton. ...

In interviews to promote her 2006 collection The View from Castle Rock, Munro has suggested that she may not publish any further collections. The View from Castle Rock is a book of short stories by Alice Munro, published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart. ...

Writing style

Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the all-knowing narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small town settings to American writers of the rural South. As in the writing of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions. However, the reaction of Munro's characters is less intense than their southern counterparts. Thus, particularly with respect to her male characters, she may be said to capture the essence of everyman. Her female characters, though, are more complex. Much of Munro's work exemplifies the literary genre known as Southern Ontario Gothic. Munro's work is often compared with the great short story writers. For example, the American writer Cynthia Ozick called Munro "our Chekhov." Categories: Stub | Ontario counties and regions ... The U.S. Southern states or the South, also known colloquially as Dixie, constitute a distinctive region covering a large portion of the United States, with its own unique heritage, historical perspective, customs, musical styles, and cuisine. ... William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning novelist from Mississippi. ... Mary Flannery OConnor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American author. ... Everyman is a 16th century English morality play. ... Southern Ontario Gothic is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of Canadian literature that comes from Southern Ontario. ... Cynthia Ozick (b. ... Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: , Anton Pavlovič Čehov) (29 January 1860 [O.S. 17 January] – 15 July 1904 [O.S. 2 July]) was a physician, major Russian short story writer and playwright. ...

A frequent theme of her work has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. It is a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event.

Munro's spare and lucid language and command of detail gives her fiction a "remarkable precision," as Helen Hoy observes. Munro's prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary with each undercutting the other in ways that simply, and effortlessly, evoke life.[1] As Robert Thacker notes:

Munro's writing creates what amounts almost to an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude — not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism' — but rather the feeling of being itself... of just being a human being [2]

Numerous critics have also asserted that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels.

Bibliography

• Dance of the Happy Shades - 1968 (winner of the 1968 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
• Lives of Girls and Women - 1971
• Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You - 1974
• Who Do You Think You Are? - 1978 (winner of the 1978 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
• The Moons of Jupiter - 1982 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
• The Progress of Love - 1986 (winner of the 1986 Governor General's Award for Fiction)
• Friend of My Youth - 1990 (winner of the Trillium Book Award)
• Open Secrets - 1994 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
• Selected Stories - 1996
• The Love of a Good Woman - 1998 (winner of the 1998 Giller Prize)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - 2001
• No Love Lost - 2003
• Vintage Munro - 2004
• Runaway - 2004 (winner of the 2004 Giller Prize) ISBN 1-4000-4281-X
• The View from Castle Rock - 2006

Dance of the Happy Shades is a 1968 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1967 in literature, other events of 1968, 1969 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Each winner of the 1968 Governor Generals Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. ... Lives of Girls and Women, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson in 1971, is a book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1970 in literature, other events of 1971, 1972 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You is a 1974 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1973 in literature, other events of 1974, 1975 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Who Do You Think You Are? is a 1978 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1977 in literature, other events of 1978, 1979 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Each winner of the 1978 Governor Generals Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a whole bunch of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. ... The Moons of Jupiter is a 1982 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1981 in literature, other events of 1982, 1983 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Each winner of the 1982 Governor Generals Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. ... The Progress of Love is a 1986 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1985 in literature, other events of 1986, 1987 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Each winner of the 1986 Governor Generals Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. ... Friend of My Youth is a 1990 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1989 in literature, other events of 1990, 1991 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The Trillium Award is given annually by the government of the Province of Ontario and is open to books in any genre: fiction, non-fiction, drama, childrens books, and poetry. ... Open Secrets is a 1994 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1993 in literature, other events of 1994, 1995 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Each winner of the 1994 Governor Generals Awards for Literary Merit received $10 000 dollars and a medal from the Governor General of Canada. ... Selected Stories is a 1996 volume of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 1995 in literature, other events of 1996, 1997 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The Love of a Good Woman is a collection of short stories by Canadian writer Alice Munro, published in 1998. ... See also: 1997 in literature, other events of 1998, 1999 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The Giller Prize is an annual award that goes to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story fiction collection published in English. ... Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a 2001 book of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 2000 in literature, other events of 2001, 2002 in literature, list of years in literature. ... No Love Lost is a 2003 collection of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 2002 in literature, other events of 2003, 2004 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Vintage Munro is a 2004 collection of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 2003 in literature, other events of 2004, 2005 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Runaway is a 2004 collection of short stories by Alice Munro. ... See also: 2003 in literature, other events of 2004, 2005 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The View from Castle Rock is a book of short stories by Alice Munro, published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart. ... // Events June 26, 2006: J.K. Rowling reaveals that two characters will die in the seventh book of the Harry Potter series. ...

Awards and honours

In Canada, Munro has received three Governor General's Awards for English-language Fiction (the most for any author), two Giller Prizes, the Trillium Book Award and the Canadian Booksellers Award. Internationally, she has won the WH Smith Literary Award in the UK; the National Book Critics Circle Award and the O. Henry Award for Continuing Achievement in Short Fiction in the U.S.; the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction; the Rea Award for the Short Story; and the Libris Award. She has also won the Canada-Australia Literary Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize Regional Award for Canada and the Caribbean. The WH Smith Literary Award is an award founded in 1959 by British high street retailer WH Smith. ... The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American association of approximately seven hundred book reviewers. ... The O. Henry Awards are yearly prizes given to short stories of exceptional merit. ... The Commonwealth Writers Prize was established in 1987. ...

In 1986, Alice Munro was awarded the Marian Engel Award for her body of work. In 1993, she was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal. In 1992, she was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Marian Engel Award is presented each year by the Writers Trust of Canada in memory of the Canadian writer Marian Engel. ... The Royal Society of Canada, (French: La Société royale du Canada) The Canadian Academy of the Sciences and Humanities, is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists and scholars. ... The Lorne Pierce Medal is awarded every two years by the Royal Society of Canada to recognize achievement of special significance and conspicuous merit in imaginative or critical literature written in either English or French. ... American Academy of Arts and Letters is an organization whose goal is to foster, assist, and sustain an interest in American literature, music, and art. ...

Munro won the Giller Prize in 2004 for her short story collection Runaway. It was her second Giller; her first was in 1998 for The Love of a Good Woman. The Love of a Good Woman was also selected as a candidate in the CBC's 2004 edition of Canada Reads, in which it was advocated by opera singer Measha Brueggergosman. The Giller Prize is an annual award that goes to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story fiction collection published in English. ... The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), a Canadian crown corporation, is the countrys national radio and television broadcaster. ... Canada Reads is an annual battle of the books competition organized and broadcast by Canadas public broadcaster, the CBC. Overview During Canada Reads, five personalities champion five different books, each champion extolling the merits of one of the titles over a series of five programs. ... Measha Brueggergosman (born on June 28, 1977 at Fredericton, New Brunswick) is a critically acclaimed Canadian soprano, who performs both as a concert artist and opera singer. ...

Munro received the Medal of Honor for Literature from the U.S. National Arts Club in February 2005. The award, given annually for a body of work of literary excellence was presented to Munro at a ceremony in New York hosted by novelist Russell Banks that included tributes by former winner Margaret Atwood and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham [3]. The National Arts Club is a New York City-based private arts club [...] dedicated to furthering art and artists in America. ... Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. ... Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. ... The gold medal awarded for Public Service in Journalism The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ... Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is an award-winning American writer/novelist, best known for his 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Hours. ...

References

• Hoy, H. 1980. "'Dull, Simple, Amazing and Unfathomable': Paradox and Double Vision In Alice Munro's Fiction." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC), Volume 5.1.
• Thacker, R. 1998. Review of Some other reality: Alice Munro's Something I've been Meaning to Tell You, by Louis K. MacKendrick. Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1998.
• Thacker, R. 2005. Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives: A Biography. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

External links

• Alice Munro Page Unofficial website.
• Munro, Alice The Canadian Encyclopedia.
• Alice Munro A Biocritical Essay of Munro's earlier work by Thomas E. Tausky (1986) The University of Calgary Library Special Collections.
• A Quiet Genius Review by Mona Simpson (2001) The Atlantic Online.
• Review of Munro's short stories
• 'It was about vanishing': A Glimpse of Alice Munro's Stories by Mark Levene
• Alice Munro Biography of Alice Munro, adapted from Meyer Literature site.
• Paula Todd's Studio 2 interview. "Literarily Speaking with Alice Munro" TVOntario, April 5, 2006--high speed
• low speed version of April 5, 2006 interview
• TV Ontario's archive of Munro materials
• Short story "Dimension" online at The New Yorker website