Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw in Wingham, Ontario. Her father, Robert Eric Laidlaw, was a fox and mink farmer,[1] and later turned to turkey farming.[2] Her mother, Anne Clarke Laidlaw (née Chamney), was a schoolteacher. She was of Irish and Scottish descent; her father was a descendant of Scottish poet James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.[3]
Munro began writing as a teenager, publishing her first story, "The Dimensions of a Shadow", in 1950 while studying English and journalism at the University of Western Ontario on a two-year scholarship.[4][5] During this period she worked as a waitress, a tobacco picker, and a library clerk.[6][7] In 1951, she left the university, where she had been majoring in English since 1949,[6] to marry fellow student James Munro.[8] They moved to Dundarave, West Vancouver, for James's job in a department store. In 1963, the couple moved to Victoria, where they opened Munro's Books, which still operates.[9]
She had three children with James Munro (one died shortly after birth),[10] and when the children were still young she would attempt to write whenever she could; her husband encouraging her by sending her into the book shop while he looked after the children and cooked.[11] In 1961, after she had had a few stories published in small magazines, the Vancouver Sun ran a brief article on her, titled "Housewife Finds Time to Write Short Stories", and called her the "least praised good writer".[12] She found it difficult, even with her husband's help, to find the time among "the pile up of unavoidable household jobs" to write, and found it easier to concentrate on short stories, rather than the novels her publisher wanted her to write.[13][14]
