The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s leading artist residency program, presented its Edward MacDowell Medal this year to acclaimed writer Alice Munro.  She was the 47th recipient of the MacDowell Medal.  The Medal is awarded annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the arts.  Ms. Munro joins an impressive list of past recipients, including Joan Didion, Georgia O’Keeffe, I.M. Pei, and Merce Cunningham.

The award was presented to Ms. Munro in a public ceremony during the annual Medal Day celebration on Sunday, August 13, 2006, on The MacDowell Colony grounds in Peterborough, New Hampshire.  Robert MacNeil, chairman of The MacDowell Colony, presented the Medal, along with Carter Wiseman, president of the board, and Cheryl Young, executive director.  Munro’s literary agent and friend, Virginia Barber, offered remarks.  Ms. Barber began her own agency in 1974; in addition to Ms. Munro, she has represented such respected authors as Peter Mayle and Diane Ackerman.

Named one of Time’s “100 most influential people” in 2005, Alice Munro has published 10 collections of short stories, including The Beggar Maid; Open Secrets; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; and Runaway.  Her distinguished work has earned numerous prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and the United States’ National Book Critics Circle Award.  New Yorker writer Joan Acocella, who chaired this year’s Medal Selection Committee, says, “The committee awarded the MacDowell Medal to Alice Munro in recognition of the emotional largeness and the dry-eyed precision of her beautiful stories, which she has been publishing for almost 40 years now.  Reviewers have often compared Munro to Chekhov, and this is no overstatement.  When you close a book of hers, you know a lot more about what it means to be human.”  Other members of the committee included writers Nicholas Dawidoff, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Vivian Gornick.

Ms. Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario in Canada in 1931.  She began writing in her teens and published her first story in 1950 while a student at the University of Western Ontario.  Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was not published until 1968, but it was highly lauded and won that year’s Governor General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary prize.

“I never intended to be a short-story writer,” she said to The New York Times.  “I started writing them because I didn’t have time to write anything else — I had three children. And then I got used to writing stories, so I saw my material that way, and now I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel.”  Indeed Ms. Munro is credited with breathing new life into the form of short fiction and unearthing the unspoken lives of her characters, especially women. 

Since the Medal began in 1960, MacDowell has awarded it to 14 writers, though none has been such an innovator in the short story.  In the 99 years the Colony has existed, it has awarded Fellowships to more than 1,600 women writers.  Ms. Munro follows past literature Medalists Marianne Moore, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mary McCarthy, and Joan Didion.

After the award ceremony, Colony guests enjoyed picnic lunches, and current MacDowell artists-in-residence opened their studios to the public from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.  There was no charge to attend the ceremony or the open studios.

Since 1907, The MacDowell Colony has provided more than 5,800 artists of all disciplines with the time and private space for creative work.  Situated on 450 acres of woodland in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the Colony welcomes more than 250 composers, writers, visual artists, architects, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary artists from the United States and abroad each year.  The sole criterion for acceptance is talent; a panel in each discipline selects Fellows.  In 1997, The MacDowell Colony was awarded the National Medal of Arts for “nurturing and inspiring many of this century’s finest artists.”

Thank You to Our 2006 Medal Day Business Sponsors...

Corporate Partner:  Lincoln Financial Group Foundation

Lead Contributors:  MARKEM Corporation and RiverStone Resources, LLC

Patrons: A. W. Peters, Inc.; Citizens Bank; Melanson Heath & Company, P.C.;
Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc.; and The Segal Company. Supporters: Aesop's Tables and Events; Bellows-Nichols Agency, Inc.; Timothy Groesbeck Builder; Jack Daniels Motor Inn; James Thomas Salon; Lake Sunapee Bank fsb; The New Hampshire Philharmonic; Public Service of New Hampshire; Sim's Press, Inc.; Sterling Design & Communications; The Toadstool Bookshops; and Yankee Publishing, Inc. Friends: CGI Employee Benefits Group; Holly Macy of Boughs of Holly; The Keene Sentinel; Kingsbury Corporation; McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton; RiverMead; and Sterling Business Print & Mail. Special thanks to Alfred A. Knopf Publishers and Vintage Books.