Alice Munro was born and grew up in Wingham, Ontario. After high school she spent two years at the University of Western Ontario, married, and moved to British Columbia. She returned to southwestern Ontario in 1972 and now lives in the town of Clinton with her second husband.

Her work is familiar to a wide audience in both Canada and the United States. In 1968, her first book of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, won her Canada's highest literary prize, the Governor General's Award. Her second book, the much-acclaimed novel Lives of Girls and Women was published in 1971 and won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award. Both books were met with unequivocal praise when subsequently published in the United States and Great Britain.