Alice Munro is born - Jul 10, 1931 - HISTORY.com

Canadian short story writer Alice Munro is born in Wingham, Ontario, on this day in 1931.

Munro was raised on a fox and turkey farm. Her parents encouraged her to read, and she decided to become a writer during her childhood. She attended the University of Western Ontario but dropped out after two years to marry James Munro. The couple moved to British Columbia, had three daughters, and opened a successful bookstore in Victoria. She later divorced her first husband, married a geographer, and settled in a town outside Ontario.

Munro began publishing short stories in the late 1960s. Her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, appeared in 1968. Since then, she has published more than 15 books, nearly all of them short story collections, including The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), and Too Much Happiness (2009). Many of Munro’s stories feature female characters living in rural settings. She has won several prestigious awards for her writing, including the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction. The Love of a Good Woman (1998) and Runaway (2004) both won Canada’s esteemed Giller Prize.