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59-458: Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania , the second daughter of Barbara Anne "Bobbi" (née Young; 1945–1991) and Ronald Nyland. From age three to six, Strayed was sexually abused by her paternal grandfather. At age six, her family moved from Pennsylvania to Chaska, Minnesota . Her parents divorced soon after and Cheryl's father left her life. When Cheryl was 12 her mother married Glenn Lambrecht, and

118-425: A "national treasure" of Canada as it focuses largely on life in rural Canada from a woman's perspective. Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood called Munro a "pioneer for women, and for Canadians". The Associated Press said that Munro created "stories set around Canada that appealed to readers far away." Sherry Linkon , professor at Georgetown University , said that Munro's works "helped remodel and revitalize

177-492: A collection of interlinked stories. In 1978, Munro's collection of interlinked stories Who Do You Think You Are? was published. This book earned Munro a second Governor General's Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1980 under its international title, The Beggar Maid . From 1979 to 1982, Munro toured Australia, China and Scandinavia for public appearances and readings. In 1980, she held

236-464: A heart condition requiring coronary artery bypass surgery . In 2002, Sheila Munro published a childhood memoir, Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro . Munro died at her home in Port Hope, Ontario , on 13 May 2024, at age 92. She had dementia for at least 12 years. On 7 July 2024, shortly after Munro's death, her youngest daughter, Andrea Skinner, revealed in an essay in

295-510: A heightened lyricism brought about not least by the poetic precision of Munro's revision. The 2009 version has eight sections to the 1980 version's three, and a new ending. Awano writes that Munro literally "refinishes" the first take on the story with an ambiguity characteristic of her endings, and reimagines her stories throughout her work in various ways. Munro married James Munro in 1951. Their daughters Sheila, Catherine, and Jenny were born in 1953, 1955, and 1957, respectively; Catherine died

354-455: A library clerk. In 1951, she left the university, where she had been majoring in English since 1949, to marry fellow student James Munro. They moved to Dundarave, West Vancouver , for James' job in a department store. In 1963, the couple moved to Victoria , where they opened Munro's Books , which still operates. She had four children with James Munro (one died shortly after birth), and when

413-422: A lifetime of novels". Immediately after the news of the sexual abuse of Munro's daughter emerged, the bookstore Munro's Books issued a statement supporting the victim. Novelist Rebecca Makkai wrote, "the revelations don't just defile the artist, but the art itself". Writer Brandon Taylor said, "I think we cannot talk about Munro's art without also talking about this aspect of her life". The news has caused

472-762: A new introduction by Strayed. Strayed's second book, the memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail , was published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf on March 20, 2012. It details her 1,100-mile hike in 1995 on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon–Washington state line and tells the story of the personal struggles that compelled her to take the hike. The week of its publication, Wild debuted at number 7 on

531-485: A selection of her 2010–2012 "Dear Sugar" online advice columns. The book debuted in the advice and self-help category on the New York Times Best Seller list at number 5 and it has also been published internationally. In November 2022 a tenth anniversary edition of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar , was published with six additional columns and a new preface by Strayed. The book again appeared on

590-506: A special issue to Munro, and in 2012, an issue of the journal Narrative focused on a single story by Munro, "Passion" (2004), with an introduction, summary of the story, and five analytical essays. Munro published variant versions of her stories, sometimes within a short span of time. Her stories "Save the Reaper" and "Passion" came out in two different versions in the same year, in 1998 and 2004 respectively. Two other stories were republished in

649-578: A suspended sentence and probation. Munro's biographer Robert Thacker was aware of the allegations, and Skinner reached out to him before his biography was published, but he chose not to include them in the book, deeming them "a private family matter". Munro's work has been described as having revolutionized the short story, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time, and with integrated short story cycles , in which she displayed "inarguable virtuosity". Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade". Munro

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708-531: A variant versions about 30 years apart, "Home" (1974/2006/2014) and "Wood" (1980/2009). (For details, see List of short stories by Alice Munro § Short stories by title (sortable) .) In 2006, Ann Close and Lisa Dickler Awano reported that Munro had not wanted to reread the galleys of Runaway (2004): "No, because I'll rewrite the stories." In their symposium contribution An Appreciation of Alice Munro , they say that Munro wrote eight versions of her story "Powers", for example. Awano writes that "Wood"

767-445: A waitress, youth advocate , political organizer, temporary office employee, and emergency medical technician throughout her 20s and early 30s, while writing and often traveling around the United States. In 2002, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Syracuse University , where her mentors were writers George Saunders , Arthur Flowers , Mary Gaitskill , and Mary Caponegro . The beautiful thing about going alone

826-541: A writing workshop to students at BlinkNow Foundation 's Kopila Valley School in Surkhet , Nepal ; the conversations she had with girls at the school led her to make a short film on the topic of chhaupadi , a form of menstrual taboo which prohibits Hindu women and girls from participating in normal family activities while menstruating . Strayed has hosted two hit podcasts for The New York Times . From 2014 to 2018 she co-hosted Dear Sugars with Steve Almond . The podcast

885-655: A young writer, and Munro's influence on Strayed's writing. Strayed's first book, the novel Torch , was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in February 2006 to positive critical reviews. Torch was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of 2006 by writers living in the Pacific Northwest . In October 2012, Torch was re-issued by Vintage Books with

944-432: Is a good example of how Munro, "a tireless self-editor", rewrites and revises a story, in this case returning to it for a second publication nearly 30 years later, revising characterizations, themes, and perspectives, as well as rhythmic syllables, a conjunction or a punctuation mark. The characters change, too. Inferring from the perspective they take on things, they are middle-aged in 1980, and older in 2009. Awano perceives

1003-456: Is one of her fiction's features. Asked after she won the Nobel Prize, "What can be so interesting in describing small town Canadian life?", she replied: "You just have to be there." Another feature is an omniscient narrator. Many compare her small-town settings to writers from the rural American South . Her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions. Much of her work exemplifies

1062-502: Is that every triumph is yours, every consequence of every mistake is yours, everything that you have to figure out is on you. That’s a really powerful experience. And sometimes it is beautiful and positive and exciting, and sometimes it's negative and hard and lonely. I wanted that. I welcomed that. —Cheryl Strayed, 2019 Strayed writes the Dear Sugar advice column, which is published on her Substack newsletter. She first began writing

1121-534: The New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover non-fiction. In June 2012, Oprah Winfrey announced that Wild was her first selection for her new Oprah's Book Club 2.0 . Winfrey discussed Wild in her video announcement of the new club and interviewed Strayed for a two-hour broadcast of her show Super Soul Sunday on the Oprah Winfrey Network . The next month Wild reached number 1 on

1180-569: The Toronto Star that her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, had sexually abused her, starting in 1976 when she was nine years old and ending when she became a teenager; she says she told Munro about the abuse in 1992. After learning of the abuse, Munro separated from Fremlin for a few months, but ultimately went back to him. According to Skinner, Munro said that she had been "told too late", loved her husband too much, and wanted to stay with him. In 2005, Fremlin pleaded guilty to sexual assault and received

1239-722: The Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Oregon Book Award . Three months before Wild was published, actress Reese Witherspoon optioned it for her production company, Pacific Standard. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay, and the film Wild was released in 2014, with Witherspoon portraying Strayed. The film was a box office hit, grossing $ 52.5 million, and led to Academy Award nominations for both Witherspoon and actress Laura Dern , who played Strayed's mother. In July 2012, Vintage Books published Strayed's third book: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar ,

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1298-866: The Borough of Northern Cambria . The local public school district is the Northern Cambria School District , whose athletic teams play under the nickname "Colts" and wear black and gold as the school colors. The current zip code of Northern Cambria is 15714. Spangler is located at 40°39'21" North, 78°46'46" West (40.655813, -78.779472). The Clearfield Progress, Clearfield, PA, Nov. 7, 1922. "Reilly No. 1 Mine, Spangler, PA; 79 Miners Killed" The Indiana Gazette, Indiana, PA, 2 January 1971. "Spangler Blaze Kills Two Patton Firemen" Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro OOnt ( / m ə n ˈ r oʊ / mən- ROH ; née   Laidlaw / ˈ l eɪ d l ɔː / LAYD -law ; 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024)

1357-496: The New York Times Best Seller list, a spot it held for seven consecutive weeks. The paperback edition of Wild , published by Vintage Books in March 2013, spent 126 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book has also been a bestseller around the world—in the UK, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and elsewhere, and has been translated into 37 languages. Wild won

1416-540: The Southern Ontario Gothic literary subgenre. A frequent theme of her work, especially her early stories, is the girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and small hometown. In work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, women alone, and the elderly. Munro's stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style. Her prose reveals

1475-650: The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, with a double major in English and Women's Studies . In March 1991, when Strayed was a senior in college, her mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45. Strayed has described this loss as her "genesis story." She has written about her mother's death and her grief in each of her books and several of her essays. She has also written about her experiences dabbling in heroin use in her twenties. Strayed has worked as

1534-462: The 2000 edition, "The Love of My Life" in the 2003 edition, and "My Uniform" in the 2015 edition). Strayed was the guest editor of The Best American Essays 2013 and The Best American Travel Writing 2018 . She won a Pushcart Prize for her essay "Munro Country," which was originally published in The Missouri Review . The essay is about a letter Strayed received from Alice Munro when she was

1593-521: The New York Times bestseller list. Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos , who also starred in the role of Sugar/Cheryl. The play was directed by Thomas Kail and debuted at The Public Theater in New York City in 2016 and 2017. It is now being staged in several theaters around the nation. In June 2022, Hulu ordered a television series adaptation of the book. The show

1652-467: The November 1922 accident, gas accumulated in one or more rooms of the mine through open doors and deficient ventilation; the gas was then ignited by miners' open lights. The presence of low-volatile coal dust helped to spread the explosion. A monument constructed to the memory of those lost in this disaster stands in a park near the center of the town. As a winter storm dumped eleven inches of fresh snow on

1711-400: The advance Macmillan had paid her for The Progress of Love so that she could follow Gibson to the new company. When Gibson published his memoirs in 2011, Munro wrote the introduction, and Gibson often made public appearances on Munro's behalf when her health prevented her from appearing personally. Almost 20 of Munro's works have been made available for free on the web, in most cases only

1770-522: The advice authors over the age of 60 had for coping. In August 2019, Strayed was one of ten women for whom statues were constructed in New York as part of Statues for Equality , a project conceived to balance gender representation in public art. Strayed married Marco Littig in August 1988, a month before her 20th birthday. They divorced in 1995, shortly before she started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Following

1829-744: The age of 17, Strayed graduated from McGregor High School in McGregor, Minnesota . During the summer of 1987, Strayed worked as a newspaper reporter for her hometown county weekly, the Aitkin Independent Age in Aitkin, Minnesota . She loosely based the fictional Coltrap County in her novel Torch on McGregor and Aitkin County. Strayed attended her freshman year of college at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul , but by her sophomore year, she transferred to

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1888-611: The ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time", "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry", "special, useless knowledge", "tones of shrill and happy outrage", "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it". Her style juxtaposes the fantastic and the ordinary, with each undercutting the other in ways that simply and effortlessly evoke life. Robert Thacker wrote: Munro's writing creates ... an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude—not of mimesis , so-called and ... " realism "—but rather

1947-527: The children were still young she would attempt to write whenever she could; her husband encouraged her by sending her into the book shop while he looked after the children and cooked. In 1961, after she had had a few stories published in small magazines , the Vancouver Sun ran a brief article on her, titled "Housewife Finds Time to Write Short Stories", and called her the "least praised good writer". She found it difficult, even with her husband's help, to find

2006-974: The column on the website The Rumpus starting in March 2010, when the column's originator Steve Almond asked her to take over for him. She wrote the column anonymously until February 14, 2012, when she revealed her identity as "Sugar" at a "Coming Out Party" hosted by the Rumpus at the Verdi Club in San Francisco. In addition to her column and books, Strayed has published essays in The Washington Post Magazine , The New York Times Magazine , Vogue , Tin House , The Missouri Review , and The Sun Magazine . Her work has been selected three times for inclusion in The Best American Essays ("Heroin/e" in

2065-484: The community and temperatures dropped to near zero degrees, a fire broke out in Weaver's Variety Shop on January 1, 1971. More than one hundred volunteer firefighters from Spangler and surrounding companies fought the fire under severe weather conditions. A wall collapsed killing two firemen, Frank Kinkead, 47, and John DeDea,32, both of nearby Patton, PA. Other firemen were injured. The fire destroyed three buildings, including

2124-477: The day of her birth due to a kidney dysfunction. In September 1966, their youngest daughter, Andrea Sarah, was born. In 1963, the Munros moved to Victoria , where they opened Munro's Books , a popular bookstore that remains in business. Alice and James Munro divorced in 1972. Munro returned to Ontario to become writer in residence at the University of Western Ontario , and in 1976, received an honorary LLD from

2183-425: The divorce, she changed her surname to Strayed, a name she chose after months of contemplation. She chose Strayed for its symbolism and because she liked how it sounded together with her first name. Strayed subsequently married filmmaker Brian Lindstrom in August 1999. They have two children and live in east Portland, Oregon , where Strayed has lived since the mid-1990s. Her daughter, Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom, played

2242-470: The feeling of being itself ... of just being a human being. Many critics have written that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels. Some have asked whether Munro actually writes short stories or novels. Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica Magazine , answered: "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels." The first PhD thesis on Munro's work

2301-704: The first versions. From the period before 2003, 16 stories have been included in Munro's own compilations more than twice, with two of her works scoring four republications: "Carried Away" and "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage". (For further details, see List of short stories by Alice Munro .) Film adaptations of Munro's short stories include Martha, Ruth and Edie (1988), Edge of Madness (2002), Away from Her (2006), Hateship, Loveship (2013) and Julieta (2016). Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario . Strong regional focus

2360-415: The following year the family moved to rural Aitkin County , where they lived in a house that they built themselves on 40 acres. The house did not have electricity or running water for the first few years. Indoor plumbing was installed after Strayed moved away for college. Strayed also has two half-siblings from her father's second marriage, with whom she connected only after Wild was published. In 1986, at

2419-497: The institution. In 1976, she married Gerald Fremlin, a cartographer and geographer she met during her university days. The couple moved to a farm outside Clinton, Ontario , and later to a house in Clinton, where Fremlin died on 17 April 2013, aged 88. Munro and Fremlin also owned a home in Comox, British Columbia . In 2009, Munro revealed that she had received treatment for cancer and for

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2478-609: The most critically acclaimed short story writers. Her works and career have been ranked alongside other well-established short story writers such as Anton Chekhov and John Cheever . As in Chekhov, Garan Holcombe writes: "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail." Her work deals with "love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov's obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward." Munro's work has been considered

2537-546: The old Spangler Theater along the main street, Bigler Avenue. Because the town of Spangler was laid out with only one main street close to the Susquehanna's riverbed and only one to three parallel streets the town adopted the motto: "The Longest Little Town in the World" due to the length of the main street, Bigler Avenue. Spangler existed from 1893 until January 1, 2000, when it merged with the adjacent borough of Barnesboro to create

2596-508: The position of writer in residence at both the University of British Columbia and the University of Queensland . From the 1980s to 2012, Munro published a short story collection at least once every four years. First versions of Munro's stories appeared in journals such as The Atlantic Monthly , Grand Street , Harper's Magazine , Mademoiselle , The New Yorker , Narrative Magazine , and The Paris Review . Her collections have been translated into 13 languages. In 2013, Munro

2655-545: The rescuers. Apparatus crews were then admitted, and twenty-two more survivors were rescued. Five others made their way out unassisted. Seventy-six bodies were found; three of the rescued men later died. Investigators later determined that the mine had been rated gaseous in 1918, but at the insistence of the new operators it was reclassified as non-gaseous. Although a fireboss was hired, men were still burned by gas on at least four occasions, and fireboss inspections were neglected and incomplete when they were undertaken. Prior to

2714-483: The short-story form". The complexity of the themes explored in her work, such as womanhood, death, relationships, aging, and themes associated with the counterculture of the 1960s , were seen as groundbreaking. Upon winning the Man Booker International Prize , her works were described by judges of the committee as bringing "as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to

2773-471: The side and end walls of the fan housing. Help was called from other mines and from the Bureau of Mines at Pittsburgh . The fan housing was patched and the fan started, making the concrete-lined, 112-foot shaft an intake. Recovery workers without apparatus encountered a live man making his way out to fresh air and brought the man and four other workers out. All were badly affected by mine gases, as were eighteen of

2832-529: The time among "the pile up of unavoidable household jobs" to write, and found it easier to concentrate on short stories, rather than the novels her publisher wanted her to write. Munro's highly acclaimed first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), won the Governor General's Award , then Canada's highest literary prize. That success was followed by Lives of Girls and Women (1971),

2891-607: The town then came into existence in 1893 when mining of extensive bituminous coal fields in the area became the dominant industry. These companies required skilled workers, many of whom came from Great Britain and Eastern Europe . Railroad lines were then built to transport the coal and the town continued to expand due to the increased economic activity. A mining disaster occurred on November 6, 1922, at Reilly No. 1 Mine. Seventy-nine miners were killed when an explosion occurred at 7:20 a.m. after 112 men had begun work. The explosion blew out some stoppings and overcasts and also

2950-749: The younger version of Strayed in the film adaptation of Wild . A long-time feminist activist, Strayed worked in her twenties as a political organizer for the Abortion Rights Council of Minnesota, which is now called Minnesota NARAL, and also for Women Against Military Madness, a feminist peace and justice nonprofit organization in Minneapolis–Saint Paul . She served on the first board of directors for Vida: Women in Literary Arts and has been active in many feminist and progressive causes. Spangler, Pennsylvania Spangler, Pennsylvania

3009-537: Was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work tends to move forward and backward in time, with integrated short story cycles . Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario . Her stories explore human complexities in a simple but meticulous prose style. Munro received the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her life's work. She

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3068-476: Was a schoolteacher. She was of Irish and Scottish descent; her father was a descendant of Scottish poet James Hogg , the Ettrick Shepherd. Munro began writing as a teenager, publishing her first story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow", in 1950 while studying English and journalism at the University of Western Ontario on a two-year scholarship. During this period she worked as a waitress, a tobacco picker, and

3127-815: Was a town, since merged, and former borough that is located in the northwest corner of Cambria County, Pennsylvania , United States. It is nestled in the valley of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River between hills of the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States . This area was first settled by Europeans during the early to mid-nineteenth century. The West Branch of the Susquehanna River enabled loggers to move their lumber harvests down river. Small farms subsequently developed and

3186-583: Was also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction , and received the Writers' Trust of Canada 's 1996 Marian Engel Award and the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway . She stopped writing around 2013 and died at her home in 2024. Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw in Wingham, Ontario . Her father, Robert Eric Laidlaw, was a fox and mink farmer, and later turned to turkey farming. Her mother, Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney),

3245-469: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature , cited as a "master of the contemporary short story". She was the first Canadian and the 13th woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro had a longtime association with editor and publisher Douglas Gibson . When Gibson left Macmillan of Canada in 1986 to launch the Douglas Gibson Books imprint at McClelland & Stewart , Munro returned

3304-466: Was produced by The New York Times and WBUR , Boston's National Public Radio affiliate. The New York Times Company announced the launch of the podcast Sugar Calling on April 3, 2020. The first episode of the show was an interview with George Saunders . The podcasts were inspired by Strayed's advice column on The Rumpus called "Dear Sugar." The podcast began during the COVID-19 pandemic and focused on

3363-606: Was published in 1972. The first book-length volume collecting the papers presented at the University of Waterloo 's first conference on her work, The Art of Alice Munro: Saying the Unsayable , was published in 1984. In 2003/2004, the journal Open Letter. Canadian quarterly review of writing and sources published 14 contributions on Munro's work. In 2010, the Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE)/Les cahiers de la nouvelle dedicated

3422-618: Was released to critical acclaim on April 7, 2023. Strayed was a writer and executive producer on the show. Strayed's fourth book, Brave Enough , was published in the United States by Knopf on October 27, 2015, and in the United Kingdom a week later by Atlantic Books . It debuted in the advice and self-help category on the New York Times Best Seller list at number 10. Strayed is also a public speaker and gives lectures about her life and books. She travels internationally to meet at writers retreats and lead writing seminars . In 2017, she taught

3481-476: Was seen as a pioneer in short story telling, with the Swedish Academy calling her a "master of the contemporary short story" who could "accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages". In her New York Times obituary, Munro's works were credited for "attracting a new generation of readers" and she was called a "master of the short story". Her work is often compared with that of

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