From Wingham, Ontario · Clinton, Ontario
Alice Munro spent her whole life writing about the small country towns of southwestern Ontario. In 2013 she became the first author ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for the short story alone.
- Born: July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario
- Family: eldest of three children of Robert Laidlaw (a fox and mink farmer) and Anne Chamney (a schoolteacher, later ill with Parkinson’s)
- Education: studied English at the University of Western Ontario on scholarship; published her first short story in the university’s literary magazine
- First marriage: James Munro, 1951; moved to Vancouver and then Victoria; opened Munro’s Books together in 1963; divorced in 1972
- Second marriage: Gerald Fremlin, geographer and cartographer, in 1976; the couple moved to Clinton, Ontario, twenty minutes south of Wingham
- First book: Dance of the Happy Shades, 1968 — won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction
- Body of work: fourteen more books over the next fifty years, almost all set in small-town southwestern Ontario
- Where her work appeared: The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review
- Nobel Prize in Literature: December 10, 2013 — the first Canadian to win it in a story-writing tradition; the first author ever to win it for the short story alone
- Died: May 13, 2024, at her home in Port Hope, Ontario, at ninety-two
- Buried: Blyth Union Cemetery, ten minutes’ drive from Wingham
1931 — Wingham, Ontario
Alice Ann Laidlaw was born on a farm on the edge of Wingham in 1931. Her father raised silver foxes and mink for their fur. Her mother had been a schoolteacher before marriage. The family was poor by the standards of the town — the fox-farming venture struggled through the Depression — and Alice grew up reading everything she could find in the library.
She wrote her first stories in high school.
She won a scholarship to the University of Western Ontario, where she studied English and published her first story in the university’s literary magazine. The scholarship ran out after two years. She married a classmate, James Munro, and moved to Vancouver with him at twenty.
1951–1972 — Vancouver, Victoria
For the next twenty years she wrote in the corners of a busy household — three daughters, a bookstore (the couple opened Munro’s Books in Victoria in 1963), and the grinding practical work of raising a family. Her first book, Dance of the Happy Shades, came out in 1968. It won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
She divorced James Munro in 1972.
1976 onward — Clinton, Ontario
Four years later she remarried — this time to Gerald Fremlin, a cartographer and geographer she had known briefly at university. Fremlin was from Clinton, Ontario, twenty minutes south of Wingham. The couple moved back east, to his family home in Clinton, and Alice spent most of the rest of her writing life there.
From that small house, she wrote fourteen more books. Every one of them set in the same landscape. She called the town Jubilee or Hanratty or Walley or Dalgleish, but it was almost always this same corner of southwestern Ontario. Her characters were farmers’ wives, small-town shopkeepers, schoolteachers, girls trying to leave. Her subject was the underneath of ordinary life in places most Canadian fiction had ignored.
For decades her relationship with Wingham was complicated. Some locals felt exposed by her portraits. Some families felt she had made caricatures of them. She moved away, but she never really stopped writing about the town she had left.
Gerald Fremlin died in April 2013.
December 2013 — Stockholm
Eight months later, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy called her “master of the contemporary short story.” She was the first Canadian to receive it in a story-writing tradition, and the first author ever to receive it for the short story alone.
She was too frail to travel. Her daughter Jenny Munro accepted the medal on her behalf in Stockholm on December 10, 2013.
Shortly afterward, Alice announced her retirement from writing. She was eighty-two. She had published fifteen books over forty-five years.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro,
“master of the contemporary short story”.
Jenny Munro receives the Nobel Medal on behalf of her mother Alice Munro in Stockholm, December 10, 2013.
Copyright © Nobel Media AB 2013, Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
Wingham reconciles
After the Nobel, Wingham reconciled with its most famous daughter. The town planted the Alice Munro Literary Garden — a small square of roses, irises, and a low wooden bench, tended by the Wingham Horticultural Society. Visitors began arriving from around the world to walk the streets she had written about for six decades.
May 2024 — Port Hope
Alice Munro died at her home in Port Hope, Ontario, on May 13, 2024. She was ninety-two. She is buried at Blyth Union Cemetery, a ten-minute drive from Wingham.
She won the Nobel Prize for writing about a place most people had never heard of. Now they have.
Wingham is a community located in the municipality of North Huron, Ontario. Wingham became part of North Huron in 2001 when the Ontario government imposed amalgamation on the former township of East Wawanosh, the village of Blyth, and the town of Wingham.
Read and watch more about Wingham
Clinton is a community in Ontario, located in the municipality of Central Huron. Established in 1831.
