Alice Munro Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

A pioneer of the 'Southern Ontario Gothic' sub-genre

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Derek Shapman / Man Booker Prize / EPA

Alice Munro.

Canadian author Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, as the Swedish Academy lauded her as the “master of the contemporary short story.”

The Ontario native, whose work has focused on small town settings similar to the literature of the American South, has been called a pioneer of the “Southern Ontario Gothic” sub-genre. She won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work

In 2005, when Munro was a TIME 100 Honoree, TIME wrote, “Alice Munro is 73 now, and she deserves the Nobel Prize. Her fiction admits readers to a more intimate knowledge and respect for what they already possess.”