Canadian author Alice Munro has won the 2013
Nobel Prize for Literature.
Making the announcement, Peter Englund,
permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy,
called her a "master of the contemporary short
story".
The 82-year-old, whose books include Dear Life
and Dance of the Happy Shades, is only the 13th
woman to win the prize since its inception in
1901.
"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never
thought I would win," Munro told Canadian
media.
Presented by the Nobel Foundation, the award -
which is presented to a living writer - is worth
eight million kronor (£770,000).
Munro said in an interview that Dear Life would
"probably" be her last book
Previous winners include literary giants such as
Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest
Hemingway.
Mr Englund told The Associated Press that he had
not been able to contact Munro ahead of the
announcement so left a message on her
answering machine, informing her of her win.
"She has taken an art form, the short story, which
has tended to come a little bit in the shadow
behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost
to perfection,'' he added.
Munro, who began writing in her teenage years,
published her first story, The Dimensions of a
Shadow, in 1950.
She had been studying English at the University of
Western Ontario at the time.
