Alice Munro wins the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian woman to take the award since its launch in 1901.
Munro, 82, only the 13th woman given the award, was lauded by the Swedish Academy during the Nobel announcement in Stockholm as the "master of the contemporary short story."
"We're not saying just that she can say a lot in just 20 pages — more than an average novel writer can — but also that she can cover ground. She can have a single short story that covers decades, and it works," said Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
Reached in British Columbia by CBC News on Thursday morning, Munro said she always viewed her chances of winning the Nobel as "one of those pipe dreams" that "might happen, but it probably wouldn't."
Munro's daughter woke her up to tell her the news.
"It's the middle of the night here and I had forgotten about it all, of course," she told the CBC's Heather Hiscox early Thursday.
"It just seems impossible. A splendid thing to happen ... More than I can say," she said, overcome with emotion.
"My stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories. I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not something you play around with until you got a novel written.
Munro said her husband, Gerald Fremlin, a geographer/cartographer who died in April, would have been very happy, as would her previous husband, James Munro, with whom she has three children, and her family.
Known as Canada's Chekhov
Born in Ontario in 1931, Alice Anne Laidlaw studied journalism at the University of Western Ontario in London before dropping out to marry James Munro, a fellow student. She became a full-time housewife and mother of their children. The family's decision to open a bookstore in 1963 helped revive her interest in writing.
Munro, who had moved to Victoria with her first husband, returned to Ontario following their divorce. She married Fremlin in 1976.
Three years ago, in an interview at Toronto's International Festival of Authors, Munro revealed she had battled cancer, but did not provide specifics. In June, she told the National Post she was "probably not going to write anymore."
Asked on Thursday whether she would reconsider that statement, Munro said she didn't think so, "because I am getting rather old."
I'm particularly glad that winning this award will please so many Canadians. I'm happy too that this will bring more attention to Canadian writing.'- Alice Munro, Ontario-born Nobel Prize in Literature winner
Munro, originally from Wingham in southwestern Ontario, has been called Canada's Chekhov. Similar to the work of the Russian short-story master, plot is usually secondary.
Munro's stories focus on striking portraits of women living in small-town Ontario. They revolve around small epiphanies encountered by her characters, often when current events illuminate something that happened in the past.
"Her work is very provincial in that it's based in small towns and rural parts of Canada for the most part. At the same time, what she does with the characters in those places is show us their universality, their humanity." New Yorker magazine fiction editor Deborah Treisman, who has edited Munro's short stories for more than a decade, told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC's Q cultural affairs show.
"She takes a specific case and makes it feel so universal."
Munro's dedication to the short story genre and to Canadian settings has set a powerful example for writers, said John Degen, executive director of the Writers' Union of Canada.
"For a long time, it was a struggle for Canadian writers to write about Canadian topics and to be small-townish. We've been told forever that that doesn't sell out in the wider market, and Alice Munro blazed that trail for all of us and let us know we could write about where we are and who we are. That's the secret of her success," he told CBC News.
The short story form "is really coming back as a result of people like Alice Munro legitimizing it and keeping it legitimate," Degen added.
"What's interesting about Alice Munro is that she never really moved on to novels, she is a really committed short story writer."
Her best-known works include the novel/story collection The Lives of Girls and Women, which charts a young girl's coming of age in rural Ontario during the 1940s, and the short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain, about an elderly couple grappling with infidelity — both the husband's in the past and that of the wife, who is losing her memory and has fallen for another man at her nursing home.
The latter story inspired Away From Her, the acclaimed 2006 film adaptation directed by Sarah Polley and starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent as the married couple. Munro's story Hateship Friendship Courtship Loveship Marriage was also adapted for film. Starring Kristen Wiig, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
"She's very good at capturing different modes in people, not sitting on the fence. No one has better deconstructed the central modern myth of romantic love, not just saying that it means this or it means that, but showing that people can feel very, very different things," Englund said in an interview just after Thursday's announcement.
"She is a fantastic portrayer of human beings"
Munro's last series of stories is the 2012 collection Dear Life, and her excellence has been recognized with numerous awards, including:
- The Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for a body of work.
- The Giller Prize twice, for The Love of a Good Woman in 1998 and Runaway in 2004.
- Three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, for her debut collection Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Who Do You Think You Are (1978) and The Progress of Love (1986).
Munro is beloved among her peers, from Lorrie Moore and George Saunders, to Jonathan Frazen and Margaret Atwood, who tweeted a "Hooray!" at the news of Munro's award.
'All of Canada is just delighted'
Douglas Gibson, Munro's longtime publisher, spoke about her Nobel triumph on CBC Radio's morning show in Toronto, Metro Morning.
Gibson told host Matt Galloway that the award is an acknowledgment of Munro's place in world literature.
"All of Canada is just delighted by this news," said Gibson. He said it's as if "all of Canada" has won the award.
Gibson also quoted a statement issued by Munro in which she says she's "amazed and very grateful" about the award.
"I'm particularly glad that winning this award will please so many Canadians. I'm happy too that this will bring more attention to Canadian writing."
Gibson said Munro's gift is to weave magic into stories about ordinary people.
"They're not set in dramatic landscapes. They're set in everyday life and yet she turns them into magic, and that's what attracts people around the world.
"They all say, 'I don't know how she does it' and I've been her editor since 1976 and I don't know how she does it either."
A who's who of past winners
Munro's name is among authors commonly mentioned when the Nobel committee considers the annual literature prize.
Past winners include literature luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, T.S. Eliot and Toni Morrison, with the last three prizes awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan, Sweden's Tomas Transtromer and Peruvian-Spanish scribe Mario Vargas Llosa.
Canadian-born, American-raised writer Saul Bellow won in 1976.
Munro — widely read, accessible, popular and respected — is not as politicized a choice as other recent Nobel laureates, including Doris Lessing, Orhan Pamuk and Harold Pinter.
"In ordinary life I am a fairly active, political person. I have opinions and join clubs. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more," she said in a 2003 interview.
The award money fluctuates, but in 2012, it was 8,000,000 Swedish krona (roughly $1.3 million Cdn).
The 2013 Nobel Prize laureates will be celebrated in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
[View the story "Twitter cheers Munro's Nobel win, refusal to wait by the phone" on Storify]
Storified by CBC News Community· Thu, Oct 10 2013 05:56:14
The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Canadian author Alice Munro, the Swedish Academy announced on live TV and on Twitter this morning.
Canadian Alice Munro, 82 yrs old, is awarded the 2013 #NobelPrize in #Literature "master of the contemporary story". http://twitter.com/Nobelprize_org/status/388257680415940608/photo/1Nobelprize_org
But even more popular than the announcement of Munro's win was this follow-up tweet about the call made to inform her of the win:
The Swedish Academy has not been able to get a hold of Alice Munro, left a phone message. #NobelPrize #LiteratureNobelprize_org
Okay, I'll do it. Alice Munro, call your office.Irin Carmon
"What's this? An early morning Swedish telemarketer?" REJECT CALL. #NobelPrizeSimon Collinson
Maybe she has a Rogers cell?RT:@Nobelprize_org: The Swedish Academy has not been able to get a hold of Alice Munro, left a phone message.Jennifer Choi
In Munro's defense, if I were retired I'd probably keep my phone on silent when I went to bed, too.Daniel J. Irving
Pulling a #Munro -- the refusal to sit by a phone waiting for a congratulatory call that may or may not come.Don Van Natta Jr.
So, how was Nobel's newest laureate informed of her win?
How #Munro found out. Phone call from daughter: "Mom, you won!"CBC World Report
On behalf of all Canadians, congratulations to Alice Munro, "master of the contemporary story," for her Nobel Prize in Literature. #canlitStephen Harper
Her publisher, of course, was delighted to tweet the news.
We're thrilled to announce that the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Alice Munro: http://ow.ly/pG6aE #CanLitRandom House Canada
Our heartiest congratulations to Alice Munro for winning the #NobelPrize for Literature 2013! http://twitter.com/RHIndia/status/388261247017172992/photo/1Random House India
Munro clearly has many fans in the literary world.
Here is my intro to Munro's Collected: Alice Munro: an appreciation by Margaret Atwood http://gu.com/p/2xm9d/tw via @guardian #alicemunroMargaret E. Atwood
Okay,everyone's calling Me to get me to write about Alice! (Alice, come out from behind the tool shed and pick up the phone.) #AliceMunroMargaret E. Atwood
Truly happy for the truly exceptional Alice Munro. And happy for those who might discover her now, after the Nobel. This is a good moment.Guy Gavriel Kay
I think that every Canadian author today feels the effects of second-hand coolness.Goose Lane Editions
Learning that one of your most beloved authors has just one the Nobel Prize for Literature is the best end to a production meeting ever.Chatto&Windus
If you're new to Alice Munro, may we suggest starting with her most recent collection, Dear Life? Peerless http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/dear-life/9780099578635Vintage Rights
#AliceMunro on writing about ordinary people. "None of them seem ordinary to me...they all want something very much." http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/book-review-podcast-alice-munro/?_r=0Nilanjana Roy
Alice Munro is a touchstone, a writer of immense understanding of the human condition and all our frailtiesKirsty Wark
You cannot take Canadian Literature in University and not fall completely in love with Alice Munro's writing.Joseph Uranowski
Alice Munro was a late bloomer: first collection was published when she was 37.Alexander Nazaryan
Many fans of Munro's work rushed to their book shelves to pull down their own copies of her short story collections.
Alice Munro's first, 1968. http://twitter.com/jacobwe/status/388260420697329664/photo/1Jacob Weisberg
And the 2013 #Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Canadian author Alice Munro. http://twitter.com/davidmacdougall/status/388265340255633408/photo/1David Mac Dougall
Pass us a copy of Alice Munro's Dear Life would you please... Need to get stuck into it immediately. #NobelPrize http://twitter.com/SocialBookWeek/status/388263290365018112/photo/1Social Book Week
Pulled my volume of Alice Munro off the shelf and was reminded it had this: http://twitter.com/Ms_Confucious/status/388268429280804864/photo/1Constance Carlson
And others had their own ways of expressing their admiration for Canada's newly minted Nobel laureate.
Here's a cross-stitch portrait I made this summer of new Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro! http://twitter.com/publicroad/status/388261472372916224/photo/1Ruth Graham
Munro said on CBC News Network that she hoped her win would draw more attention to Canadian writers. Perhaps to female writers, too.
Congrats to Alice Munro! Wondering if David Gilmour is rethinking his curriculum? #canlit #alicemunro #NobelLiteraturePrizeJonna Brewer
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