Alice Munro: 7 insights on writing from the Nobel Prize winner
All hail "Canada's Chekhov"
Alice Munro has been lauded as "Canada's Chekhov" thanks to her amazing skill as a short-story writer. And while she is no stranger to acclaim and awards, on Thursday she became just the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the first Canadian to win the prize since Saul Bellow in 1976.
"She has taken an art form, the short story, which has tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection," the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, told the Associated Press.
Munro's stories, often set in rural Ontario, where she lives, have appeared in 14 original short story collections and regularly in publications like The New Yorker and The Paris Review. While the 82-year-old Munro doesn't tweet, her friend (and revered author in her own right) Margaret Atwood expressed her feelings online.
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For the sake of everyone who loves short stories, here are seven quotes about the craft of writing from Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro.
On writing short stories
On whether she considers herself a feminist writer
On her influences
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On memory
On revisions
On creating convincing characters
On making sacrifices
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Keith Wagstaff is a staff writer at TheWeek.com covering politics and current events. He has previously written for such publications as TIME, Details, VICE, and the Village Voice.
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