The New York Times
News/ Great Books
March 29, 2001
The Canadian storyteller Alice Munro added a leaf to her laurels this week: the Rea Award for the Short Story, which carries a prize of $30,000. Sponsored by the Dungannon Foundation, the award was established in 1986 by Michael M. Rea to honor a living American or Canadian writer who has made a significant contribution to the short story form. . . .
Litchfield County Times
Litchfield, CT
March 30, 2001
Canadian Writer Wins Rea Award
By Jennifer A. Peyton
WASHINGION—The Rea Award for the Short Story, a $30,000 annual prize established by Michael M. Rea of Washington, has been awarded to Canadian author Alice Munro.
A passionate reader, Mr. Rea wrote short fiction and collected first editions of American short stories. He also collected fine art and served as a trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Norton Museum of Art. He established the Rea Award in 1986 to honor a living United States or Canadian writer “for literary power, originality and influence on the genre.” Mr. Rea died in 1996 but the award has continued under the direction of his wife, Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, a photographer and curator who still resides in Washington.
Of Ms. Munro’s work, the jurors for this year’s award, Maureen Howard, James Salter and Edmund White, said:
“For many years the Canadian writer Alice Munro has astonished her readers with stories that are magical and wise. The magic is in her art as a storyteller, in her exquisitely modulated prose—lyrical, exacting, at times comical—which captures the lives of her characters, both women and men, attempting to understand their personal histories in the larger sweep of history. Munro’s configuration of time is Chekhovian, supple in its bright flashes of insight, connection, shadowed in its strokes of disappointment, separation and loss. Long honored as a master of short fiction, Munro’s searching narrators often draw the reader to contemplate the devices of storytelling itself, the mysterious ways in which we distort reality, reconfigure the past to avoid or embrace revelation….”
Ms. Munro has published nine collections of stories. The most recent, The Love of a Good Woman (1998), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The New York Times has described her as “the only living writer in the English language to have made a major career out of short fiction alone.” Her newest collection of stories, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, is due in November.
Publishers Weekly
Awards
April 2, 2001
Munro Wins Rea Award
The 2001 Rea Award for the short story has been given to Canadian writer Alice Munro, who has published nine collections of stories. The award, which honors a living U.S. or Canadian writer who has made a significant contribution to the short story form, carries a prize of $30,000. Munro’s work has won the Lannan Literary Award, the W.H. Smith Award (given to Open Secrets as the best book published in the U.K. in 1995) and the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Love of a Good Woman, which is her most recent book. Her next book, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, will be published by Knopf in November.
Palm Beach Daily News
April 18, 2001
Canadian Munro wins Rea Award
By Jan Sjostrom
Canadian writer Alice Munro has won the 2001 Rea Award for the Short Story. The late Palm Beach resident Michael Rea established the $30,000 award in 1986 to recognize American and Canadian writers who have significantly contributed to the short-story form. Given annually by Rea’s Dungannon Foundation, it is the only award in the United States dedicated exclusively to the short story.
A panel of distinguished writers selects the winner. This year’s panel was composed of Maureen Howard, James Salter and Edmund White.
In their citation about Munro’s work, the judges wrote “The magic is in her art as a storyteller, in her exquisitely modulated prose — lyrical, exacting, at times comical —which captures the lives of her characters, both women and men, attempting to understand their histories in the larger sweep of history.”
The New York Times described Munro as the only living writer in the English language to have made a major career out of short fiction alone.
Her nine published short story collections include The Love of a Good Woman, Open Secrets, and The Moons of Jupiter. Her next collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, will be released in November.
Munro has won Canada’s highest literary award three times. Her other awards include the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998 for The Love of a Good Woman.
Michael Rea died in 1996. The Dungannon Foundation continues its work under the direction of his wife, Elizabeth Richebourg Rea.