“What if people really did that - sent their love through the mail to get rid of it? What would it be that they sent? A box of chocolates with centers like the yolks of turkey eggs. A mud doll with hollow eye sockets. A heap of roses slightly more fragrant than rotten. A package wrapped in bloody newspaper that nobody would want to open,” wrote Alice Munro in her story The Love of a Good Woman. (Good Reads, 2013)
History:
Alice Munro was a fascinating author born and raised in a heavily dominate Scottish-Irish community of Wingham, Ontario, Canada. Born on July 10, 1931, she was the eldest of three children and she still resides very close to where she was born and raised. She had a true passion for where her home was and where she felt comfortable. She focused her work on fictional writings. Although she spent her years as a writer, she rarely referred to herself as an author the way her husband did and joked when people referred to her as an author. She thought of herself as just a writer. Alice Munro was a compelling author whose work has landed her numerous awards in several countries and even turned down chances of winning more awards.
Influences:
Alice Munro had many inspirations to include Updike, Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Taylor, and William Maxwell. She is often compared to Chekhov, referring to Cynthia Ozick, when it comes to writing style. She fed off of her inspirations to become the author she is today. Cynthia Ozick called her in a vaulting comparison that has become something of an obligatory tip of the critical hat ever since, bringing ever more stratospheric analogies to Tolstoy and Flaubert in its wake. (MERKIN, 2004)

Her work:
Alice Munro wrote a wide array of work from love to violence to prostitution. She also talked about her young marriage, having kids, getting a divorce, the death of her parents and finding a new husband. She was often accused of writing about people that she knew and had to constantly defend herself and tell people that her stories were fiction. Most of her books were collections of her stories. Some of the books that she has had published are Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Lives of Girls and Women (1971), The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), and The View from Castle Rock (2006)
She has received many awards to include three GOVERNOR-GENERAL's awards (1968, 1978, 1986), two GILLER Prizes (1998, 2004) and the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in 2009, as well as the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and the O. Henry Award in the US for continuing achievement in short fiction. (DUFFY, 2012) She has also turned down many awards that she was deserving of.
Alice Munro “The Feminist”
“I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism.” This was said by Alice Munro during an interview with The Atlantic Unbound in 2001. (Atlantic Unbound, 2001)
Most of her stories were based on women. This is why people think that she was a feminist. She has also said “I am the one who is against gender discriminations such as unequal compensation of men and women for the same position with the same amount of training and experience, promotion difficulties, and even a matter of courage.” (Munro, n.d.) Alice’s stories painted pictures for the readers and helped empower women to do things.
Floating Bridge analysis:
Floating Bridge was a heartfelt and touching story about a woman named Jinny who finds out she is living with cancer. Although her story was fiction, as most of her stories were, it was a very realistic and moving story. The story was about how her life had changed with the news and the obstacles her family had to face with the news.
This story was important because it was about a subject that, perhaps, is not talked about enough and should be talked about more so people can get a better understanding of what all changes when it comes to cancer. She covered small changes and big changes from buying the later needed hospital bed to talking with grief counselors to prepare themselves for her passing. It was odd that they were certain of her passing so close to the beginning without letting the reader know how bad her cancer was or the type of cancer she had. The story goes on to talk about how the family tries to cope with the fact that cancer is consuming their lives. They got a lady, by the name of Helen, to live with them to help out with the care of Jinny. This seemed to back Neal, Jinny’s husband, feel better and more at ease with the fact that Jinny had cancer. The ending of the story was a bit sad as Alice did not go on to say the fate of Jinny. The story did end peacefully with Jinny at peace and where she wanted to be, on the floating bridge surrounded by tranquility.
The story ended with, “What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.” (Gilbert & Gubar, 2007) This was a peaceful way to end a melancholy story about hope, love and compassion between two people and the obstacles they had to overcome in their life together.
Conclusion:
Alice Munro is an interesting author who wrote short stories about life that most people were afraid to write about. She used immense detail, in which some of her work had to be edited to be publish in some magazines and news articles. This is what made Alice Munro such an interesting and compelling author. She deserved the awards she won and she should have won more had she been willing to accept the ones she was nominated for.
It was recently reported that Alice Munro will be ending her writing career and will be retiring. Most people think that she will not go through with this choice to end what she did almost her entire life. She did, however, thank both her ex-husband and current husband for supporting her and her dream to become the writer she has always wanted to be.

Bibliography
Atlantic Unbound. (2001, December). Bringing Life to Life. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/interviews/int2001-12-14.htm
Dickler Awano, L. (2013, Spring). An Interview With Alice Munro. Retrieved May 25, 2013, from Virginia Quaterly Review: http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2013/spring/munro-interview/
DUFFY, D. (2012). Alice Munro. Retrieved May 25, 2013, from The Canadian Encyclopedia: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/alice-munro
Edemariam, A. (2003, October 3). Riches of a double life. Retrieved May 25, 2013, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview8
Gilbert, S., & Gubar, S. (2007). The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women Vol. 2 . New York: WW Norton & Company.
Good Reads. (2013). Alice Munro Quotes. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from Good Reads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6410.Alice_Munro
MERKIN, D. (2004, October 24). Northern Exposures. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from New York Times Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/magazine/24MUNRO.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
Munro, A. (n.d.). Feminist Self-Discovery of the Central Character in “Boys and Girls”. Retrieved June 8, 2013, from Northern Virginia Community College: http://www.nvcc.edu/home/nleslie/feminist_self.htm
TREISMAN, D. (2012, November 20). ON “DEAR LIFE”: AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MUNRO. Retrieved May 25, 2013, from The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/on-dear-life-an-interview-with-alice-munro.html