The second in a series of OLLI courses on Alice Munro led by Dr. Linda Leavell, a biographer and retired professor of American literature.. This class will read Dear Life, Munro’s fifteenth and last collection of stories: stories of unexceptional, mostly rural Canadians whose lives throb with disillusionment, loneliness, mystery, and epiphany. Short stories can be wonders of style and
compressed psychological insight, yet they get too little notice among general readers.
“I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel,” said Alice Munro when she won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. Participants should purchase or borrow Dear Life to have in hand during class meetings, which will consist mostly of discussion. Before the first class, participants should read the first five stories.

Instructor: Linda Leavell