Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize–winning author whose understated short stories explored the interior lives of small-town Canadians and who was widely considered one of the greatest writers in the English language, has died at 92.

Her death was announced in a news release by her publisher, Penguin Random House Canada.

Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario, and educated at the University of Western Ontario. She co-founded Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1963, with then-husband James Munro.

Alice Munro made her literary debut in 1968 with the story collection Dance of the Happy Shades, which won a Governor General’s Award. She followed that up three years later with a novel in stories, Lives of Girls and Women, which a critic for Kirkus praised as “very likable” and “very real.”

Her other books include The Moons of Jupiter; Friend of My Youth; The Love of a Good Woman; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Runaway; and Dear Life.

In 2013, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy praising her as “the master of the contemporary short story.” She was also the third winner of the International Booker Prize, when the award was given to an author and not a particular book.

Munro’s admirers paid tribute to her on social media. On X, professor and critic Adam Dalva wrote, “I have never gone a semester without teaching  a story  by Alice Munro—and when my students read and discuss ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain,’ or ‘The Albanian Virgin,’ or ‘Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,’ their worlds expand. And every time, mine does too.”

And novelist Adam Sternbergh posted, “not at all an exaggeration to say that Alice Munro was the single most revered living Canadian, both nationally and globally. a true giant.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.