Imagine the short story as poetry. And imagine that Alice Munro isn't merely a writer -- she is a literary alchemist, stirring, distilling, testing, and violating the language and conventions of the short story with breathtaking results. As fellow short-story writer...
[more]Imagine the short story as poetry. And imagine that Alice Munro isn't merely a writer -- she is a literary alchemist, stirring, distilling, testing, and violating the language and conventions of the short story with breathtaking results. As fellow short-story writer Lorrie Moore observed, "It's the subtle way she has of talking about the entirety of a life and the strange moments a life suddenly pivots upon...She's just a genius."
One of Munro's first collections was short-listed for the Booker Prize; 'The Beggar Maid' (1978) is a series of interweaving stories about two women in a small Canadian town. The stories explore the evolution of the difficult yet enriching relationship between Flo and Rose, stepmother and stepdaughter, over a span of 40 years. In response to the work, novelist John Gardner was moved to write: "Whether 'The Beggar Maid' is a collection of stories, or a new kind of novel, I'm not quite sure, but, whatever it is, it's wonderful."
For Munro, who calls herself "an unapologetic writer of short fiction,' there's no question which genre she's working in. She maneuvers the vehicle of the short story with deft and subtle skill to illuminate her great themes: love's mercurial spirit; the unexpectedness of passion; the chaos hovering just below the surface of things; the strange, often comical, desires of the human heart.
Winner of the 1999 National Book Critics Circle award for her collection 'The Love of a Good Woman,' she is considered a master of her genre and put on a par with Russian writer Anton Chekov. Her stunning, measured prose shines with an authenticity that feels keenly autobiographical -- she reveals how life is nothing like novels, but instead full of chance, complicated choices, and layers of meaning.
Writer Ellyn Bache notes, "Rather than plumbing pathos, she coolly explores the possibilities of human conduct through stories that defy resolution...[Her] special strength has always been to look unflinchingly at the self-serving side of human nature that seeks ease, pleasure, and freedom without regard to others."
A resident of British Columbia, Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton and Comox. Her storied career includes many awards and prizes, including Canada's highest, the Lannan Literary Award. Her collections have been translated into 13 languages. As critic Alex Keegan remarked, "Munro tells stories, but she makes me think about how I think, and continue thinking, about the story and about what the story suggests, long after the book itself has been put down."
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