The Swedish Academy has announced the winner of the 2013 Noble Prize for Literature, giving the honor to Canadian writer Alice Ann Munro.

Canadian author Alice Munro, pictured at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, on June 25, 2009.

The announcement from Stockholm delighted the literary world after they heard that Munro would be the 13th female literature recipient since the prize was founded in 1901.

Munro took the lead over the most promising candidate Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, who was predicted by the UK bookmaker ladbrokes' favourite list.

Unlike other authors, Munro is one of the few literature laureates to write almost exclusively in the short story form. Her famous works include "Lives of Girls and Women", "Who Do You Think You Are?", "The Progress of Love", "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage", and "Runaway."

The locus of Munro's fiction is her native southwestern Ontario. Her "accessible, moving stories" explore human complexities in a seemingly effortless style.

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners, called Munro the "master of the contemporary short story."

Munro is also the only Canadian to win the literature prize, apart from Canada-born U.S. novelist Saul Bellow, who won in 1976.

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