CANTON -- St. Lawrence University will hold a book publication celebration for Robert Thacker, professor of Canadian studies and English, whose new book "Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013" was recently published by University of Calgary Press. The event will take place from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on Friday Oct. 23, in the Dean-Eaton Formal Lounge.

As a literary critic, Thacker is in the unique position of having the trajectory of his professional life mirror that of the subject of his critical focus, Alice Munro, a Canadian short story author and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Thacker encountered Munro’s writing in 1973 as he was beginning his academic study, reading a recently published story of Munro’s in an issue of the Tamarack Review. While Munro, herself, was still early into her writing career, Thacker quickly made her writings the focus of his own critical writing, tracking her career as she became one of the most respected writers of her generation.

In Reading Alice Munro, Thacker collects much of this critical writing. The essays are chronological, and contextualized within the critical-literary times in which they appeared.

Thacker’s book provides the reader with a unique perspective on the growth of critical attention given to Munro throughout her career as well as on what Thacker regards as the often inadequate quality of this critical attention. For although she is admired as a writer, Munro, Thacker argues, has not been given the serious critical attention she deserves. He pushes for more widespread critical appraisal of Munro’s writing, and offers his own critical commentary and assessments along the way. Foremost are the critically significant ways in which Munro blurs the distinctions between fiction and biographical writing.

The essays in Reading Alice Munro recreate, as Thacker says, “moments in literary history,” and offer “a cogent record” of the emergence of a major literary figure. They are also a record of a life in Munro criticism.

For more information, contact the Office of Academic Affairs at 229-5449.