The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Munro, Alice
Munro, Alice
(
1931
–
),
Canadian
short story writer, born in Wingham, Ontario, where she grew up. She spent two years at the University of Ontario, married, and moved to British Columbia. Each of her collections, Dance of the Happy Shades (
1968
), Who Do You Think You Are? (
1978
), published in Britain as The Beggar Maid, and The Progress of Love (
1986
), won the Governor General's Award. Her other collections include Friends of my Youth (
1973
), Open Secrets (
1994
), and Runaway (
2004
). Munro describes herself as writing about ‘places where your roots are’, in her case, small-town southern Ontario, whose texture and unremarkable lives engage her imaginative sympathy. Her writing is characterized by, above all, superb and precise mastery of the short story form; both lucid and compellingly mysterious, the stories combine poetic intensity and economy with the...
[The entire page is 155 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
