Munro Won’t Be First Winning Author Not to Attend Nobel Award Ceremony

Alice Munro, “Canada’s Chekov,” won’t be traveling to Sweden to collect her  Nobel Medal and her cheque for eight million Swedish kronor (About $1.3 million) on December 10. According to the Victoria Times Colonist, the 82-year-old author is too frail to make the trip, but that their, Jenny Munro, daughter will go in her place:

Jim Munro of Munro’s Books said Friday his former wife cannot make the trip because her health is delicate.
“She’s not well enough to go,” he said. “She’s happy. She’s not bed-ridden or anything. Just too fragile to take such a trip.”

Inside the Stockholm Concert Hall.

According to The Guardian, Munro isn’t the first winner who didn’t make the trip for health reasons:

Doris Lessing, who was 87 when she won the prize in 2007, was advised by doctors not to travel, because of back trouble, and the Nobel Foundation came to London to award the prize instead.

Harold Pinter, then 75, didn't go in 2005, citing poor health, and Austria's Elfriede Jelinek declined the year before that, saying that she was "not in a mental state to withstand such ceremonies".

Announcing the award, Englund described Munro as the "master of the contemporary short story", with a "power of observation that is almost uncanny" and an "intelligence and power of observation that could be a bit problematic, because she sees through people".

January Magazine announced Munro had won the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 10th. You can see that piece here.