Writer Alice Munro, 'the Canadian Chekhov', dies aged 92

The Canadian writer Alice Munro has died, aged 92, at her care home in Ontario. The Nobel prize winner, who examined everyday life through the lens of short stories for more than 60 years, had lived with dementia for more than a decade.

- Richard Lea, Sian Cain

Once called "the Canadian Chekhov", Munro's work was founded on subjects traditionally disregarded by the literary mainstream. It was only later in life that her reputation began to rise, her understated stories of apparently plain folks in undramatic, small-town Canada amassing a raft of international awards that included the 2013 Nobel prize in literature.

Margaret Atwood called her "among the major writers of English fiction of our time". Salman Rushdie praised her as "a master of the form" while Jonathan Franzen wrote: "[Munro] is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion." Born in 1931 to a family of fox and poultry farmers living outside Wingham, Ontario, and struggling to survive during the Great Depression, Munro went to university on a scholarship and studied for two years before moving to Vancouver with her first husband, James Munro, in 1951.

Describing herself as a "B-minus housewife" during this time - she had to ask her husband for money to buy groceries Munro began to write whenever her daughters were asleep, keeping the pieces short because it was hard to concentrate for extended periods. ("I was big on naps," she told the Observer in 2005.)