St. Lawrence Professor Gets Munro's Cooperation on Bio

Newswise — A new biography of acclaimed author Alice Munro, by St. Lawrence University Professor of Canadian Studies and Molson Research Fellow Robert W. Thacker, is the first such volume that has received Munro's cooperation.

"Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives" was published recently by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto, who calls it "the book about one of the world's great authors, which shows how her life and her stories intertwine."

The publishers state, "For almost 30 years, Thacker has been researching this book, steeping himself in Munro's life and work, working with her cooperation to make it complete. The result is a feast of information for Alice Munro's admirers everywhere. By following 'the parallel tracks' of Munro's life and Munro's texts, he gives a thorough and revealing account of both her life and work."

A faculty member at St. Lawrence since 1983, Thacker is a graduate of Bowling Green State University. He earned a master's degree from the University of Waterloo " writing his thesis on Munro " and the Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba. He is an expert on Canadian culture, especially literature, and has written extensively on the work of Munro, Willa Cather, and the North American literary west.

Thacker is the editor of "The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro" (1999). He received the 2003 Edith and Delbert Wylder Award from the Western Literature Association and is a former editor of The American Review of Canadian Studies. Thacker was awarded a grant from the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to support research on the Munro biography, as well as the Molson Fellowship, funded by a gift from Eric Molson, chairman of Molson Inc., and his wife, Jane Molson, of Montreal, through the Lincolnshire Foundation.

Widely regarded as among the best contemporary writers of short stories in English, Munro has published a novel, "Lives of Girls and Women" (1971), and the short-story collections "Dance of the Happy Shades" (1968); "Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You" (1976); "Who Do You Think You Are?" (1978; U.S. and U.K., "The Beggar Maid"); "The Moons of Jupiter" (1982); "The Progress of Love" (1986); "Friend of My Youth" (1990); "Open Secrets" (1994); "The Love of a Good Woman" (1998); "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" (2001); "Vintage Munro" (2004); and "Runaway" (2004). Since the 1970s, Munro's stories have been frequently printed in periodicals such as The Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly and, especially, The New Yorker, which has itself published well over 40 of them.

A review of "Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives" in the December Quill & Quire states that Thacker provides "an extraordinary wealth of detail on Munro's progress as a writer," and that he "brings together much illustrating commentary on what Munro does and how she does it."