May 27, 2009- Canadian writer Alice Munro is the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize.
The £60,000 prize is awarded to a living author every two years"for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage."
The award was first presented in 2005 to Ismail Kadaré. The second winner was Chinua Achebe in 2007.
Munro is best kn[own for her short stories, which have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Grand Street, Mademoiselle, and The Paris Review.
"I am totally amazed and delighted," Munro said when she learned of her victory.
Munro had previously been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her 1980 book The Beggar Maid. She was also the winner of the Canadian Boooksellers Association International Book of the Year for 1971's Lives of Girls and Women.
