Alice Munro - A Woman of Big Words

10^th July 1931; this is the year on which the currently worldly acclaimed Canadian writer, Alice Munro, was born as Alice Ann Laidlaw, in Wingham, Ontario. Munro started writing while in teenage, with her “The Dimensions of a shadow” (a short fiction) getting published in 1950. By then, she was an English and Journalism student at the University of Western Ontario. 
She left the institution in 1951 to marry James Munro, a colleague student. The couple in 1963 opened Munro’s Books at Victoria, which is still in full operation.

Alice Munro’s career as a writer kicked off in 1968. Her first highly-celebrated short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, won the Governor General’s Award. This is the most prestigious literary award in Canada. Lives of Girls and Women followed this triumphant publication in 1971. The collection contains intertwined tales occasionally mistakenly described to be a novel.

          Alice Munro with one of her short story collections

In 1978, she once again penned an anthology of related stories published in the USA entitled; The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose.  This publication earned her another Governor General’s Award. Alice Munro, in 1980, she spent time as a writer at both the University of Queensland and the University of British Columbia. 

Her short stories have frequently appeared in publications like The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Grand Street, Mademoiselle and The Paris Review.  Munro’s works benefitted translation into thirteen diverse languages. On 10^th October 2013, Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s highest literary prize a writer would dream to bag.  

Munro’s stories have Huron County, Ontario as their setting. One of her fiction’s characteristics is strong regional concentration. She has been compared to Chekov as for her time obsession and her prospect of her works addressing issues relating to labour and love, and the failures of both.

A common theme of her writings – notably apparent in her initial works – has been certain contradictions growing girls and familiarizing themselves with their families and their hometowns.

Alice married James Munro in1951. And the couple were blessed with three daughters; Sheila, Catherine, and Jenny – born in 1953, 1955, and 1957 respectively. Catherine passed away several hours after successful birth.  Another daughter, Andrea was born in 1966, replacing the then already deceased Catherine.

The couple went their separate ways in 1972.  In 1976, Alice married a photographer, Gerald Fremlin, whom she had interacted with in campus.  Fremlin died on 17^th April 2013, aged 88. Despite this misfortune, Alice Munro’s pen has never run out of ink. Apparently it might not do so as her legacy would forever retain its drive in the minds, hearts and souls of many a writer.