For more than four decades, Canadian author Alice Munro has delighted readers with her engaging storytelling and profound “slice of life” narratives. Now, the Royal Canadian Mint proudly celebrates this Nobel Prize-winning author with a unique coin that honours Munro’s literary contributions—both at home and worldwide!

As the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, Munro holds the added distinction of being the first Canadian woman to win this remarkable accolade. She is truly an icon of Canadian literature and a master of the short story, leading some to refer to her as “Canada’s Tchekhov.”

Alice Munro is the 110th Nobel laureate in literature. Remarkably, she is only the 13th woman to receive this honour since its inception in 1901. Her first collection of stories, titled Dance of the Happy Shades, was published when she was
37-years old. Over the course of her remarkable career, Alice Munro has won the Man Booker International Prize, two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, three Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Marian Engel Award and the American National Book Critics Circle Award. In fact, the Giller Prize has been awarded to short-story authors only three times—and two of those went to Alice Munro!

In many of her short stories, Alice Munro transports us to the small towns of Southwestern Ontario that she has known throughout her life. While these settings may seem uniquely Canadian, the conflicts and the female characters are not—there is a universal appeal to these everyday people whose personal turmoil propels them towards an epiphany of sorts. Told in a lyrical yet precise prose style, these coming-of-age stories are filled with human complexity – doubts and emotions that we can all relate to—which creates a reading experience that is entertaining, enlightening and empowering.

• Engraved in exquisite detail, your coin celebrates one of Canada’s most celebrated authors and her literary achievements.
• Your coin features a passage chosen by Alice Munro herself from one of her short stories, titled The View from Castle Rock. The author explains its significance and her thoughts as she wrote it: “As a writer you need to be alone. You need to get to a place of solitude and when you get there it can be magical. The whole world opens up to you in your imagination merging the world inside of you and outside of you.”
• STUNNING USE OF MICRO-TEXT! Uses advanced engraving techniques so that you can view the words of Alice Munro crystal clear using a magnifying glass!

Designed by Canadian artist Laurie McGaw, coin pays tribute to Canadian author Alice Munro. An ethereal female figure is seen emerging from a pen as a representation of one of the many central characters from Munro’s beloved short stories. An image of a hand is seen resting against an open book, whose pages are inscribed with a passage from Munro’s The View from Castle Rock, which reads: “And in one of these houses – I can’t remember whose – a magic doorstop, a big mother-of-pearl seashell that I recognized as a messenger from near and far, because I could hold it to my ear – when nobody was there to stop me – and discover the tremendous pounding of my own blood, and of the sea.” Above it, a laurel branch celebrates Munro’s distinction as the first Canadian woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.