Ahh, women are good writters. I haven't heard of Alice Munro. What kind of stories does she write? 

She writes stories set in small towns, mostly set here in Ontario (the town where she currently lives is maybe 1/2 hour from my house). Coming of age stories, midlife stories, aging stories, mostly revolving around girls and women (indeed, one of her more famous collections is titled Lives of Girls and Women). The writing style section of the wiki on her isn't a bad summary but, of course, the best thing to do is read some of her work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro

She was talking about retiring after last year's collection called Dear Life but something in one of the stories I read about the Nobel suggested the prize may have her rethinking that. She's 82 and has won pretty much every literary award a Canadian can win (some multiple times) so if she chooses to stay retired, no one could blame her.

Mendalla

Congratulations to Alice Munro -she's receiving good coverage here in Oz.

(Gotta say, my favourite Canadian writer is Margaret Atwood.)

I can't say Atwood has ever really done much for me. Survival, her guide to Canadian literature, was a text in my Grade 13 (we had five years of high school back in my day, hence 13 grades total) and did it's best to make CanLit sound horrifically dreary. Which, for some parts of Canadian history, it certainly was though we had our bright spots, too, which I recall she largely ignored (e.g. Leacock).

My favorite Canadian writer is Robertson Davies with Leonard Cohen as a close second (for both his poetry and the novel Beautiful Losers). But there is a lot of CanLit, including Munro, that I haven't really delved into deeply.

Mendalla

Great day for Canadian literature. A grtreat day of recogntion for the art of the short story. Too bad that aware readers are a bit thin on the ground. 

Alice Munro's a favorite of mine.

I give Alice Munro for Christmas.  We have Alice Munro all over the house.  I love her writing. I pick it up and it put it down. It is as natural as breathing. She deserves her Nobel. What a wonderful recognition. I am so glad it for her.

This is an important part of her win. The publishing industry is very focussed on novels and the bigger, the better seems to rule (witness the fantasy genre where we've gone from trilogies like The Lord of the Rings to taking 7-10 books to tell a story in Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire). Yet, for my money, some of the best stories I've ever read have been short stories or novellas. Even Stephen King, best known for table crashing monsters at one point in his career, has done some of his best work (The Body, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) at shorter lengths. Anything that helps get readers to realize that literature does not have to mean 500+ page tomes is a good thing in my book.

Mendalla

Alice Munro is certainly a worthy recipient.  I've always loved her work and her insights into the human condition. 

Also enjoy other Canadian greats such as Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood.