Canadian Short Story Writer Alice Munro Wins 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature

Alice Munro, Canadian short story writer and winner of 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature
Photo courtesy: www.news.nom.co

Alice Munro at her younger age

Photo courtesy: evelazarus.com/house-stories/alicemunro

 

Alice Munro by David Levine

 Image courtesy: The New York Review of Books

On October 10, Alice Munro, an 82-year old Canadian short story writer, has won this year’s Nobel prize in literature for her total work in short story writing. The Nobel committee mentioned her as the “master of the contemporary short story.” 

Known in Canada as the “Canadian Chekhov,” after the Russian master story writer Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro has made a name in both Canada and USA.  Her Nobel prize win was welcomed everywhere in Canada. 

She is the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the thirteenth woman in the world to win this particular prize. When the Canadian Press contacted her, her reaction was: “I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win.”

Alice Munro was a regular writer of the magazines of The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review. 

Born at Wingham in southwestern Ontario, Alice Munro, in her long writing career, has received more than a dozen prizes and recognitions from different countries, including Canada.

A hand-written letter of Alice Munro

 Image courtesy: The Vancouver Sun

  
 Reactions on Munro's Win

Many people reacted enthusiastically at the Nobel Prize win of Alice Munro. They can be read at: Canadian authors cheer Alice Munro's Nobel Prize win.    

 Alice Munro's Books

• Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)

• Lives of Girls and Women (1971)

• Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974)

• Who Do You Think You Are? (1978) [Published as The Beggar Maid in the USA]

• The Moons of Jupiter (1982)

• The Progress of Love (1986)

• Friend of My Youth (1990)

• Open Secrets (1994)

• Selected Stories (1996)

• The Love of a Good Woman (1998)

• Queenie (Storycuts) (1999)

• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)

• No Love Lost (2003)

• Vintage Munro (2004)

• Runaway (2004)

• The View from the Castle Rock (2006)

• Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (2006)

• Away from Her (2007)

• Tricks (2008)

• Alice Munro’s Best (2008)

• Too Much Happiness (2009)

• My Best Stories (2009)

• New Selected Stories (2011)

 Appraisal of Alice Munro's Works

The New York Times in piece gave an appraisal of the Nobel laureate's works. It can be accessed at: An Appraisal: Master of the Intricacies of the Human Heart and Writers on Munro.


Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize Win a Slap on David Gilmour’s Bias

A National Post cartoon (Toronto: Oct. 11, 2013)

David Gilmour, a visiting University of Toronto professor of English Literature and an award-winning author, created a firestorm after an interview with the Hazlitt literary magazine where he said that he doesn’t teach books by women or Chinese authors because he is interested in “serious heterosexual guys.”

In the interview of September 25, 2013, he said: “I teach modern short fiction to third and first year students. So I teach mostly Russian and American authors. Not much on the Canadian front. But I can only teach stuff I love. I can’t teach stuff that I don’t, and I haven’t encountered any Canadian writers yet that I love enough to teach.”     

He further said: “I’m not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories…Unfortunately none of those happen to be Chinese, or women…I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.”

Some readers became furious at this news. Some accused him of being arrogant, sexist, racist and homophobic. In reply to the National Post daily, he said: “There isn’t a racist or a sexist bone in my body,’ and his quote was taken out of context. Then the Hazlitt magazine published the complete unedited transcript of the interview showing the real Gilmour in his own words.

After Alice Munro, a woman Canadian writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, her Canadian fans have been coming after David Gilmour with their claws on.

School Student Malala Yusufzai Proposed for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Pakistani school student Malala Yusufzai, who was shot in the head by Talibans for her vocal support for girls' education

Photo courtesy: veteranstoday.com

 

Thousands of people all over the world, including some members of the Canadian Parliament, lent their support for nominating 14-year-old school student Malala Yusufzai of Pakistan for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The online petition calling for this nomination was posted by Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-Canadian author and newspaper columnist of Toronto, Canada, reports the Toronto Sun.

Canada's Immigration Minister and member of parliament (MP) Jason Kenney and Liberal Party Leader and MP Bob Rae lent their public support for Malala's nomination.

Malala Yusufzai, a school student of Mingora in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, was vocal against the destruction of girls’ schools in the area by Muslim fundamentalist Talibans. In face of dire Taliban threats to her life, Malala was exceptionally brave in speaking out for girls’ rights, including their rights to education.

A Taliban, on October 9, boarded a bus carrying girls from the school to their homes and shot Malala in the head and wounded another girl. A team of Pakistani army doctors and civil surgeons  first treated seriously wounded Malala in the army hospital in Peshawar before transferring her to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on October 15. The doctors there announced recently that she was recovering well.

 After invading Afghanistan in late 2001, the U.S. armed force drove out the Talibans, who then took shelter in the border areas of Pakistan.  Later they became so powerful that Pakistan could not exert control over them. They started to impose Islamic Shariah laws forbidding many things including women’s education. When Malala was 11 years old, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC and described how people were living under the rule of the Talibans. That’s how she began to face threats to her life from them.