We’re still smiling about last week’s announcement that Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature. We’re thrilled that she’s the first Canadian to be granted the prize, and that she’s made the (short) list of female recipients a bit longer, but those are not our only causes for celebration. We love Alice Munro because she’s a powerful storyteller, and for us, well-told stories make the world go round. 

It’s not so much what Munro writes about that fascinates us — ordinary people; small-town settings — but it’s how she writes that makes her work unforgettable. We revere her rich and complex character studies; her deceptively simple prose; her ability to reveal deep truths about the human condition in utterly new ways, over and over again.

In a recent Slate podcast, author Meghan O’Rourke said that reading Munro’s stories is like dreaming that unsettling dream in which you suddenly discover a room you’ve never seen before, in your own house. That’s precisely what great storytelling does: it makes us see new things in the most unexpected ways.

Munro’s win reminds us of how fortunate we are to do what we do. Every day, in many different ways, we help our clients bring well-told stories into the world; stories that reveal deep truths, stories that open new doors. Stories that change lives.

Lucky us.