Canadian author Alice Munro (1997 interview) | Fresh Air

The writer Alice Munro was a craftsman, known for her intricately paced short stories that could devastate a reader. Her characters often lived in rural Ontario, like Munro herself.

In an interview after winning the Nobel Prize, she said that living in a small town gave her the freedom to write. "I don't think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level," she said. "I was the only person I knew who wrote stories, though I didn't tell them to anybody, and as far as I knew, at least for a while, I was the only person who could do this in the world."

Munro died on May 13, 2024 at the age of 92.

This interview originally aired November 7, 1997.

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