Alice Munro, a celebrated writer, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, and co-founder of Munro’s Books, has passed away.
Alice met Jim Munro, a bookseller at the time, during her studies at the University of Western Ontario. In 1963, exactly a half-century before she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she co-founded a bookstore with her then-husband at a modest space on Yates Street in Victoria.
The two lived across the street from Beacon Hill Park and spent their years together establishing the bookstore before separating in 1972.
According to Robert Thacker’s Alice Munro’s Victoria, the author once said that “going to Victoria and opening a bookstore was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. It was great because all the crazy people in town came into the bookstore and talked to us.”
After the divorce, Alice moved back to Ontario, but the legacy of Munro’s Books and Alice lived on. While some critics say Munro often uses Huron County, Ontario, in her settings, others argue that Victoria and Munro’s Books played key roles in her literary landscape too.
While Alice began to establish herself as an author, the bookstore grew.
In 1984, Munro’s Books moved into a magnificent former bank on Government Street, where it has been a destination for book lovers for more than 50 years. In 2015, National Geographic recognized it by naming it the third-best bookstore in the world. In 2014, Jim retired, passing on the bookstore to four employees. He passed away in 2016.
Meanwhile, Alice became one of Canada’s most prolific writers, publishing 14 bestselling collections and earning numerous literary accolades, including Governor General’s Awards and Giller Prizes, culminating in the highest honour a writer can achieve: the Nobel Prize.
In 2013, Alice became the first Canadian to win the Nobel as “master of the contemporary short story.”
Munro passes away at the age of 92 with a renowned legacy spanning the country, from her brief stint in Victoria as a bookshop owner in the late ’60s and early ’70s to her prolific status as a Nobel Prize writer in Ontario.