STOCKHOLM — Short story master Alice Munro, who captured everyday lives and epiphanies in rural Canada with elegant and precise prose, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
Munro is the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious $1.2 million award from the Swedish Academy since Saul Bellow, who left for the U.S. as a boy and won in 1976.
Seen as a contemporary Chekhov for her warmth, insight and compassion, she delves into a wide range of lives and personalities without passing judgment on her characters, often girls and women. Her stories are acclaimed for their unique and piercing insight into the ordinary personal dramas in the towns and farming communities of her home region of southwestern Ontario.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.