Making the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, called Alice Munro a "master of the contemporary short story". "She has taken an art form, the short story, which has tended to live a little bit in the shadow of the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection," he said. The 82-year-old, whose books include Dear Life and dance of the Happy Shades, is only the 13thwoman to win the Nobel Prize for literature since its start in 1901. "I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," Munro told Canadian media. Alice Munro: "I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art form." Munro, who began writing in her teenage years, published her first story, The Dimensions of a Shadow, in 1950. Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968, was Munro's first collection, and it went on to win Canada's highest literary prize, the Governor General's Award. In 2009, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her entire body of work -- but she downplayed her achievements. "I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn't have any other talents," she once said in an interview. BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz said Munro had been "at the very top of her game since she started". "Very few writers are her equal," he said, adding "She gets to the heart of what it is to be human". The award "probably won't make a commercial difference" to the author, he added, but it "makes a huge difference to how her work will be viewed in historical terms". "If she hadn't won it before she died, I think it would have been a terrible, terrible omission  ." Often compared to Anton Chekhov, she is known for writing about the human spirit and a regular theme of her work is the dilemma faced by young girls growing up and coming to terms with living in a small town. Several of her stories have also been adapted for the screen, including The Bear Came over the Mountain. What does Will Gompertz think of Alice Munro?
He thinks very highly of her. He thinks she's a productive writer. He is amazed by her different skills. He compares her to Anton Chekhov.