Image courtesy of Nobelprize.org
Alice Munro is the newest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Canadian short-story writer received the award on Thursday, October 10, which makes her the 13th woman to win the award since its beginning in 1901. Munro has published 14 collections of short stories to date. Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) said, “Munro’s stories focus on striking portraits of women living in small-town Ontario. They revolve around small epiphanies encountered by her characters, often when current events illuminate something that happened in the past.” Munro’s latest collection, Dear Life, was published in 2012.
According to USA Today, Munro is “arguably the most popular writer to win the prestigious award—worth $1.2 million and given for a body of work, not a specific title—since Toni Morrison, the last American to win, did so in 1993.”
It’s standard practice for Nobel Prize recipients to receive a phone call telling them of their achievement. However, things didn’t go as planned this time around. The Swedish Academy took to their Twitter to relay the experience:
Munro hopes her win will help the short fiction form to excel. She said to CBC, “My stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories. I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not something you play around with until you got a novel written.”
Any students interested in short fiction should look into WRI 311: Creative Writing: Short Fiction. The course is being offered in Spring 2014 and is taught by Dr. Voccola. I took this class a couple semesters ago, and I really enjoyed the experience. I read lots of interesting short stories and ended up writing two of my own. If you enjoy reading or writing short stories, I highly recommend taking this class.
By Philip Baily
Kutztown University Professional Writing 
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