Alice Munro Talks About the Writing Life in Her Nobel Prize Interview

On Octo­ber 10th, Cana­di­an writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. And if you’re not famil­iar with her work, we sug­gest that you spend time read­ing the 18 Free Short Sto­ries we gath­ered in our cel­e­bra­to­ry post.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, recip­i­ents of the Nobel Prize trav­el to Swe­den to accept the award in mid Decem­ber. But the 82-year-old writer, cit­ing poor health, decid­ed to stay home and forego mak­ing the cus­tom­ary accep­tance speech in Stock­holm. (See past speech­es by Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er, Stein­beck, V.S. Naipaul and oth­ers here.) Fans of Munro weren’t left emp­ty-hand­ed, how­ev­er. From the com­fort of her daughter’s home in Vic­to­ria, British Colum­bia, Munro sat down for an infor­mal, 30-minute inter­view and talked about many things: how she first began writ­ing and telling sto­ries; how she gained (and lost) con­fi­dence as a writer; how she men­tal­ly maps out her sto­ries; how she has become a dif­fer­ent writer with age; how the writ­ing life for women has changed over the years; and much more. You can watch the com­plete Nobel inter­view above.

via Page-Turn­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On His 100th Birth­day, Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

7 Nobel Speech­es by 7 Great Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er, and More

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online