(DailyDig.com) – Alice Munro, a Nobel laureate and Canadian author of short stories, died on May 13 in Ontario, Canada, at 92.
A spokesperson from Penguin Random House, her publisher, confirmed her death, stating that they wanted to express their immense sadness at the death of their master of short stories.
Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario, and grew up just past a disreputable area of the town, as said in an interview in 1984. During the struggles of family life, she found solace in her childhood readings. Her early love of writers such as Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, and Lucy Maud Montgomery gave her a love of literature.
She once stated that books were the magic that she wanted in her life. They were extremely important to her, even beyond life.
As the valedictorian of the 1949 graduation class, she received a two-year scholarship to the University of Western Ontario. She chose journalism as her major there, but changed it to English. Even with her scholarship, she soon experienced financial issues that required her to work in several capacities, such as a library clerk, in order to continue her studies.
Just prior to her graduation, she married James Munro, one of her fellow students, and moved to Vancouver. They quickly had three children before moving to Victoria and opening their bookstore. Munro spent that time at the bookstore, absorbing as much of the literature as possible. Some of her favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, gave her the validation she needed to pursue writing about rural women in small towns.
During her responsibilities as a mother, she learned to master short stories, as she was only able to write during naptime for her children. It also led her to focus on relationships in domestic life as themes for her stories.
Some of her stories were translated into films, such as “Boys and Girls” from 1983, which won an Oscar, and “Away from Her,” a 2006 film that was also nominated for an Oscar.
Munro’s daughters, Andrea, Jenny, and Sheila, all survived her.
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