Canadian author Alice Munro wins 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature

The 82-year-old, whose books include 'Dear Life' and 'Dance of the Happy Shades', is only the 13th woman to win the prize since its inception in 1901.

The award is presented by the Nobel Foundation and is only awarded to a living writer. It is worth eight million kronor (just over €900,000).

Previous winners include literary giants such as Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway.

Making the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, called her a "master of the contemporary short story".

"She has taken an art form, the short story, which has tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection,'' he added.

Munro, who began writing in her teenage years, published her first story, 'The Dimensions of a Shadow', in 1950.

She had been studying English at the University of Western Ontario at the time.

In 1968 'Dance of the Happy Shades', Munro's first collection of stories, was published. 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.

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.

The Nobel academy praised her "finely tuned storytelling, which is characterised by clarity and psychological realism".

"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," Munro said when informed that she had won the award.