No preview available
HomeMy WebLinkAboutLakeshore Advance, 2013-10-16, Page 3Alice Munro wins Nobel prize for literature QM' Agency Canadian author Alice Munro has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Munro, who lives in Clinton, Ont., is the 1 7th Nobel laureate born in Canada, and the 13th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Calling her the "master of the contempo- rary short story," officials said she is "acclaimed for her finely tuned storytelling, which is characterized by clarity and psy- chological realism." 1 ler most recent collection of short sto- ries, Dear Life, was released in 2012. The announcement, which came at 7 a.rn. ET, may have been too early for the 82 -year-old author, and the committee admitted the world knew about her win before she did. "The Swedish Academy has not been able to get a hold of Alice Munro, left a phone message," the academy tweeted 'Thursday. Later, media reports indicated Munro's daughter woke her up to deliver the news. Prime Minister Stephen limper congrat- ulated the author on Twitter about an hour later. "On behalf of all Canadians, congratula- tions to Alice Munro," he wrote. Munro was awarded a prize of 8 million crowns ($1.25 million). The literature prize is the fourth of this year's crop of Nobel Prizes to be announced. The prize program was estab- lished in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and awarded for the first time in 1901. Joan Barfoot (London novelist) "1 "She's brilliant. And this (award) is brig 1iant. She's just a perfectly impeccable writer, and every word and every sentence counts ill What she does.... What she does, of course, is reveal what everybody actually knows but doesn't recognize very well, which is that nobody is ordinary, that every life is a drama. She managed to pick the drama out of lives that a lot of people don't notice, or snake presumptions about." "She perfects the short story, which to my mind is much harder to write than a brilliant novel, because it's so compact and every word has to count. 'There's no room for sagging, and Alice never sags." Bonnie Bumard (London novelist): "For ►ne, her talent is twofold: she has an absolute love of the English language, and she is immensely smart in her examination of the human condition. She exposes weak- ness, without condemnation.... 1 think what she writes about is ordinary experience, rather than ordinary people. It's the ordinary experience of birth, death, sex (and) love, rather than the extraordi- nary experience of going around the world in 80 days. She's writing about ordinary experience, which is universal, rather than ordinary people." Bryce 'i'raister (chair of Western Univer- sity's English department): "She is probably one of the most accom- plished prose stylists in any genre. I ler work brings out the complexities Of inner life. She finds the extraordinary and the wondrous residing in the illost ordinary and everyday events, and writes about those things in a way that finds the grace- ful, the beautiful, the terrible and the tragic in all of us" Nancy Schaefer (London freelance writer and book reviewer): "She is consistently superb (in her writ- ing), because she never lets you down. It's always wonderful.... I would call her a master of the short story. if you're Dickens, you ('1111 write 00 and on forever, describing every last chair in the house, and get away with it. But she doesn't do that. She distills life." BIOGRAPHY OF ALICE MUNRO: • Born in Wingham, Ont. July 10, 1931 • Her fiction has earned throe Gover- nor -General's awards (1968, 1978, 1986), two Giller prizes (1998, 2004) and the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement (2009) • After her first marriage to James Munro ended in 1951, Munro returned to the Uni- versity of Western Ontario (where she first started writing fiction as a student in 1950) and served as writer -in -resi- dence in 1974; in 1976 she married Ger- ald Fremlin and settled on a farm out- side Clinton; Fremlin died in April, 2013 • Munro had three daughters: Sheila (born 1953), Catherine (1955) and Jenny (1957); Catherine died shortly after birth • In 2009, Munro revealed she had been treated for cancer and undergone heart bypass surgery Many of Munro's sto- ries are sot in Huron County, Ont. • Her short stories have appeared in pub- lications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The Paris Review • Her books include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968). Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), The Progress of Love (1986), Runaway (2004), Too Much Happiness (2009) and Dear Lifo (2012) Wednesday, October 16, 2013 • Lakeshore Advance 3 QMI Agency the photo Lambton Fall beigt/ Festival co October 19 & 20, 2013 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Over 100 Craftspeople - Two Locations! Also Featuring: • Thedford Fall Fantasia • Poinsettia Holiday Shopping Tour (Northville, Port Franks) count. of 1 iu ae T('* Lambton Heritage Museum 8 km south of Grand E3end on Hwy 21 519-243-2600 Legacy Recreation Centre 16 Allen Street Thedford, ON NOM 2NO www.Iclmg.org