Girls just wanna have the highest literary honor in the world.
Canadian author Alice Munro will receive the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature for her body of work. Munro is the author of one novel and numerous collections of short fiction and has been lauded as the master of the contemporary short story. Her work includes Lives of Girls and Women, Too Much Happiness, and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Unlike many other Nobel laureates, Munro’s writing focuses on relationships and small-town life rather than having any broad political messages. She told the Associated Press in 2003,
“In ordinary life I am a fairly active, political person. I have opinions and join clubs. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more.”
Though she wrote from a young age, Munro’s first collection didn’t come out until 1968, when she was 37 years old. Before that, she’d been a journalism student, a housewife, and a bookstore owner. She conquered depression to start her literary career, and I am so inspired my head might explode. You know you wish this woman were your awesome literary grandmother.
Back in 2009 when Munro won the Man Booker International Prize (this lady wins everything), one of the judges said of her work:
“Her commitment to the story as a form is very impressive. Lesser writers would have produced a good or mediocre novel, or three or four, over the years. The fact she decided this is what she was going to explore is very impressive, especially in the Anglo writing world, which is inimical to the shorter form. She’s wonderful – the way she brings in memory, the way she handles language and narrative …The level of craftsmanship involved demands attention.”
Go forth and read!
(via: Associated Press, The Guardian, photo via The Guardian)
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