Alice Munro

Alice Munro was born Alice Laidlaw in rural southern Ontario, Canada, which is also the setting of most of her stories. Munro’s father was a farmer, and her mother was a teacher. She began writing when she was a teenager and published her first short story when she was 19 years old and studying English at the University of Western Ontario. She left school after two years to marry James Munro. They moved to West Vancouver, where they had three daughters. In 1963, the family moved to Victoria, British Columbia, and opened a bookstore called Munro’s Books. In 1965, Munro published Dance of the Happy Shades, a collection of short stories, to critical acclaim. In 1972, after having a fourth daughter, Alice and James Munro separated and Alice went back to the University of Western Ontario to become a writer in residence. There, Munro married her second husband, Gerald Fremlin. Since 2009, Alice Munro has suffered various health conditions that have prevented her from travel and public appearance. Munro’s most recent short story compilation is Dear Life, published in 2012. In 2013, her husband died, and in the same year, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.