Alice Munro (10, July 1931-13, May 2024) was a Canadian writer and Noble Prize winner.
1. Alice Ann Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario during the Great Depression. Robert Eric Laidlow, her father, farmed foxes, minks, and later turkeys. Anne Clarke Laidlaw, her mother, was a schoolteacher. Scottish writer and poet James Hogg was a relative on her father’s side.
2. Mrs. Munro remember reading The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Anderson’s classic retelling. The sad ending impacted her greatly, and she sat down to rewrite the story, but this time with a happy ending. She viewed that moment as the start of her writing career.
3. As a child, she loved to read and reminded her mother of a reclusive relative, Emma McClure, who read all the time, for 35 years, and never got married.
4. She attended the University of Western Ontario on a scholarship. However, the scholarship did not come with a “meal plan”, and as the daughter of a poor farmer she was constantly hungry. Nevertheless, the university’s undergraduate magazine published her first story in 1950.
5. Her scholarship ran out in 1951, and she was forced to drop out since paying out of pocket was out of the question. Before dropping out though, she met James Munro, her future husband, eating chocolate coated peppermints in the university’s library.
6. Despite her early beginnings as a writer, Alice Munro’s first book, Dance of the Happy Shades, as published when she was 37 years old. The book won Canada’s top literary price, the Governar General’s Award, one of three she earned. However, once the New Yorker published her 1977 story, Royal Beatings, she became an intentional sensation.
7. Alice Munro is famous as a master of short stories, but she spent decades trying to write a full-length novel-which never happened.
8. In 1963, Alice and James Munro moved to Victoria, British Columbia and founded Munro’s Books. To this day, it’s considered to be a legendary Canadian independent books store.
9. In 2013, Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian citizen to win the award.
10. Alice Munro was celebrated by the Royal Canadian Mint which issued a 2014 commemorative 99.99% pure silver 5-dollar coin with her likeness. A year later her legacy was furthered honored with a commemorative postage stamp.
Zohar — Man of la Book
*Amazon links point to an affiliate account
Sources:
Alice Munro | Wikipedia
Canadian writer and Nobel prize winner Alice Munro dies at 92 | NYS Writers Institute
Alice Munro’s Passive Voice | The New Yorker
