Alice Ann Munro (née Laidlaw; 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024) was a renowned Canadian short story writer, often hailed as the "master of the contemporary short story." She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.

Munro's fiction primarily takes place in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario. Her stories intricately explore human complexities through a simple yet meticulous prose style. Her celebrated works include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) and The Moons of Jupiter (1982). Over her career, Munro was a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, she received the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her lifetime body of work. Munro's stories often move forward and backward in time and are published in esteemed publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Her story collection, Runaway, won the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Her only novel, Lives of Girls and Women, was published in 1971. Munro's story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Away from Her. Munro retired from writing in 2013. She has also been the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the W.H. Smith Award, and several other prestigious honors.