Share this:
Alice Munro (pictured) has won the third Man Booker International Prize. Not to be confused with the annual Man Booker Prize, the Man Booker International Prize is worth £60,000 to the winner and is awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.
The Man Booker International Prize was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005 and then to Chinua Achebe in 2007.
Munro is best known for her short stories and is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. Born in Wingham, Ontario on 10 July, 1931, she moved to Victoria, Canada in 1963 and established Munro Books with her husband. Her stories frequently appear in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review.
Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) was highly acclaimed and won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s prestigious literary prize. This success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971), which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. In 1980 The Beggar Maid was shortlisted for the annual Booker Prize for Fiction.
Other awards Munro has won include the Marian Engel Prize, the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, the Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award and the 1986 Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
Her latest collection of short stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in October 2009.
The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2009 was: Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician; and writer, film script writer and essayist, Andrey Kurkov.
Peter Clarke, Chief Executive, Man Group plc said: “Since her first collection of stories was published in 1968 Alice Munro has been highly acclaimed as the contemporary master of the short fiction genre. We are delighted to honour her as the recipient of the third Man Booker International Prize.”
Alice Munro will receive the prize of £60,000 and a trophy at the Award Ceremony on Thursday 25 June at Trinity College, Dublin.