Alice Munro, Nobel Prize-winning short-story author, dies at 92

Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author who explored love, life, and loss in short-story collections like Runaway and Dance of the Happy Shades, died Monday evening at her home in Port Hope, Ontario. She was 92.

Her publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, announced the news Tuesday. A cause of death was not disclosed, though Munro had been living with dementia for at least the last decade.

The company's chief executive, Kristin Cochrane, said in a statement, "Alice Munro is a national treasure — a writer of enormous depth, empathy, and humanity whose work is read, admired, and cherished by readers throughout Canada and around the world. Alice's writing inspired countless writers too, and her work leaves an indelible mark on our literary landscape."

Munro was heralded as one of the greatest writers of contemporary fiction, frequently compared to playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. Her accolades included the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature, the 2009 Man Booker Prize for her lifetime body of work, and the Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, which she won three times.

Her short stories were celebrated for possessing as much literary and emotional depth as a novel. In addition to her tendency to play with time in her work, Munro's stories often focused on the lives of women. In her early years as a writer, she was preoccupied with the female coming-of-age, and as she grew older she turned her attention to the woes of middle age and questions of loneliness.

"When I began writing there was a very small community of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world," Munro said in a statement upon receipt of the Nobel Prize. "Now Canadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe. I’m so thrilled to be chosen as this year’s Nobel Prize recipient. I hope it fosters further interest in all Canadian writers. I also hope that this brings further recognition to the short story form."

Alice Ann Laidlaw Munro was born July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, to a farmer and a schoolteacher. She began writing as a teenager, and her first short story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow," was published in 1950, while she was a student at the University of Western Ontario.

Munro left college in 1951 to marry fellow student James Munro, and the couple moved to Victoria in 1963, where they founded independent bookstore Munro's Books, which is still in operation today.

Her first significant collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968, and won the Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction. Her other two such wins were for 1978's Who Do You Think You Are? and 1986's The Progress of Love. She was nominated an additional two times but did not win.

Who Do You Think You Are? was also published as The Beggar Maid, and it was shortlisted for the 1980 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

From the early 1980s through her final work, 2012's Dear Life, Munro published a new short-story collection at the minimum of every four years, sometimes more frequently. Her titles included Lives of Girls and Women, Open Secrets, The Love of a Good Woman, Runaway, The View from Castle Rock, and Too Much Happiness.

Munro was also known for revisiting and republishing her stories with significant edits (sometimes under new titles). Her work was also often collated and published in anthologies by other editors under titles such as Selected Stories and Vintage Munro.

Her work was regularly published in journals around the world, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, and The New Yorker.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Munro's work defined the Southern Ontario Gothic subgenre, earning her comparisons to William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, masters of the American Southern Gothic. Entertainment Weekly's review of Dear Life praised "Munro's gift of observation and ability to trace big emotional arcs in short brushstrokes."

Much of Munro's work has been adapted to the screen, including 1988's Martha, Ruth and Eddie, 2002's Edge of Madness, 2006's Away From Her, and 2016's Julieta.

She and James Munro divorced in 1972. She married Gerald Fremlin in 1976, and they remained together until his death in 2013. Munro was preceded in death by a daughter, Catherine, who died the same day she was born in 1955. She is survived by her daughters Sheila and Jenny.