Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92

 Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92

Alice Munro, the Nobel Literature Prize winner best known for her mastery of short stories and depictions of womanhood in rural settings, has died in Ontario, Canada, at the age of 92. The news was confirmed to CNN “with great sadness” by a spokesperson at her publisher, Penguin Random House.Born in 1931 in Wingham, Ontario, Munro grew up on what she described as the “collapsing enterprise of a fox and mink farm, just beyond the most disreputable part of town” in a 1994 interview with “The Paris Review.” Amid familial struggles, Munro found an escape in reading as a child. Her early enthusiasm for renowned writers such as Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, among others, reflected an appreciation for literature beyond her age.

“Books seem to me to be magic, and I wanted to be part of the magic.” she told The Guardian of her childhood reading habits. “Books were so important to me. They were far more important than life.”

As the valedictorian of her high school’s graduating class of 1949, Munro received a two-year scholarship to attend the University of Western Ontario, where she majored in journalism before switching to English.

Despite the scholarship initially being a lifeline for Munro, perpetual financial struggles forced her to work as a tobacco picker, a library clerk and even to sell her own blood while studying. After the conclusion of her scholarship, and before her graduation, she married fellow student James Munro and moved with him to Vancouver, where the couple had three children in relatively quick succession (their middle child, Catherine, died shortly after her birth due to kidney complications), and then to Victoria in 1963, where they opened a bookstore.There, Munro wholly immersed herself in literature, namely writers such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers, whose work Munro told “The Paris Review” validated her desire to write about rural people in small towns. In addition, she was able to overcome a crippling writer’s block that had plagued her in her twenties — and had resulted in more abandoned work than finished writing.

But it was maternity that led to Munro’s mastery of short stories, not only because familial relationships and domestic lives served as a focal point in many of her works, but also because in her attempt to reconcile her maternal responsibilities with her desire to write, Munro could only set aside short periods of time during her day to craft stories, to the point where she would jot down ideas and drafts during her children’s naps.