HERE'S how the public part of my writing career tends to unfold: I read aloud to an audience from whatever my latest novel happens to be and, having learned to acquit myself in reasonably lively, literate fashion, wind up feeling fairly chuffed. Then follows a conversation with those in the audience willing to pipe up with whatever questions and comments they please. At some point during this portion of the programme, someone will inquire, "And who do you most like to read?"

And no matter that I'm thrilled by, admiring of, all sorts of writers and stories; what immediately comes out of my mouth every time is "Alice". No need to add the "Munro" - everyone knows.

No need either to rabbit on, although inevitably I do, about the literary virtues of Alice Munro. How a tucked-in half-sentence of hers can stop me dead and send my mind cascading down its own rivulets of recognition or discovery. Or how often I've finished one of her paragraphs, or one of her stories, wondering exactly what technique she has used to slide my emotions and perceptions in one direction, then yank them back, then shift them unexpectedly to a different place entirely ...

A writer desires to analyse, and if possible steal, such techniques. I've studied and studied Alice's sentences, and still can't discern how she does what she does. All this I hear myself telling audiences, before recalling that once again I'm spending a great deal of time trying to illuminate not my own work, which at some earlier point must have been my purpose, but Alice's, which needs not a morsel of commentary from me.

Even Alice herself spends virtually no time communicating publicly about her work. Just read it, she seems to say, if she were saying anything at all. The words on the page, not words from the writer, are what count. So her interviews are rare - even receiving the Man Booker International Prize this year barely raised an on-the-record peep from her - and her public appearances can seem eccentrically chosen: the occasional gala, yes, but also the odd smalltown book festival where she's fond of the people involved.

To be clear, though, this reticence isn't new, and has not been induced by staggering literary success or any Salingeresque aim for the alluringly mysterious image. She has always, for instance, been reluctant to engage with the media, even though she enrolled in a journalism programme herself as a young woman entering university. Or, on second thought, perhaps that's where she first had intimations that not every journalist will be smart, attentive, comprehending or precise. Some years later, I enrolled in the same journalism programme at the same university, and learned a few things myself.

At any rate, there Alice Munro lives, strictly writing, in a small town very near where she grew up, which happens to be midway between where I live now and where I grew up. Which makes us, if not quite next-door neighbours, at least familiar with, and I think also formed by, a particularly stern Canadian geography. It's hilly, rocky land that would look familiar to Scots - and indeed must have looked familiar generations ago, when it was largely settled by Scots come to Canada.

There wasn't much time or inclination for the tomfooleries of fancy activities, much less fancy speech. And from that (at least this is my theory) comes a respect, even now, generations later, for the power of plain language. The notion, too, that what goes unspoken, the glances and silences between sentences, can turn life - and thus literature - in eye-widening, heart-catching directions.

Long ago, when I first began reading the work of Alice Munro, I recognised not only that landscape, but the class structures that evolved in its small communities, and how those things formed and illuminated every one of her people - which perhaps gave me a head start in feeling her work in my bones. But obviously prior knowledge of a particular line of country is unnecessary if literature is going to reach across all sorts of borders. What her roots really provide Alice the writer with, is the subtle, ferocious ability to cut to the human chase; to reach something spare yet complete that's recognisable wherever people desire to comprehend other humans' behaviour. Or their own.

Mind you, my view is not quite universally held. A few years ago, a Canadian writer, a man originally from the Caribbean, told me that he and those like him had nothing to learn from any aging white woman named Alice. This was startling, not to mention dismaying, largely because I admired his work, which was tender and passionate and felt as if it made my worlds larger - the major criterion I hold for what is worth reading. And although not named Alice, was I not also white and aging (if only because one is bound to be either aging or dead)? Did he assume, in reverse, that I - or Alice, for that matter - should equally be unable to absorb his experience, his work? A sadly narrow view if so, especially for a writer, for which profession curiosity, imagination and expansive empathy are surely essential.

By and large, though, Alice Munro manages to transcend the authorial bickerings, rivalries, resentments and bitternesses that sometimes disrupt the flow of good cheer among writers, in benign Canada as often as anywhere else. Even the league of juniors who periodically erupt with demands that their elders get out of their publishing way mainly give Alice a pass. Never mind that she's 78, she's Alice, and not even the most confident, arrogant youngster is likely to think one of the world's great short story writers should quit so that he might naturally grab her spot in the pantheon.

And never mind that she's 78, she hasn't yet written the same story twice. Then there is, of course, her most famous excursion into the exotic, the long and gobsmacking The Albanian Virgin.

She is brave, is what I mean. Not every Munro story is a work of perfection - that would be weird - but she doesn't rest on what she has already done. She remains, as any alert writer should, fearful about the quality of the next attempt, but makes it anyway, and almost always surprises. In all these ways she would be a "role model", if "role model" weren't such a loathsome expression.

It cheers Canadians generally that a countrywoman is so widely and lavishly recognised. But more precisely and personally her existence reminds writers, including me, that whatever scatterings of subjects and settings, themes and characters we choose to investigate, the pursuit is of wonder and excellence, the grave beauty of words, and the many natures, capacities and geographies of the human heart - which happens to be Alice's real, unboundaried turf.

Joan Barfoot's most recent novel, Exit Lines, is published in paperback this month by Phoenix, priced £7.99