Short-story writer and novelist, born in Montreal, Quebec, SE Canada. Educated bilingually, she has lived mainly in Paris since 1950, contributing regularly to The New Yorker. Now recognized as one of Canada's foremost short-story writers, she was not widely read in Canada until publication of From the Fifteenth District (1979). Among later works are Home Truths (1981), Overhead in a Balloon (1985), and In Transit (1988). Her novels include Green Water, Green Sky (1959) and A Fairly Good Time (1970).
Mavis Leslie Gallant, CC, née Young (born 11 August 1922) is a Canadian writer.
Biography
An only child, Gallant was born in Montreal, Quebec. Gallant left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing.
Gallant has been forthright about the protectiveness she feels towards her autonomy and privacy. It's what I like doing.” In the preface to her collection of stories, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), she uses the words of Boris Pasternak as her epigraph: “Only personal independence matters.”
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature;
In 1989 Mavis Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
With Alice Munro, Gallant is one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appear in The New Yorker.
Critical assessment
Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that “Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant’s stories, nor is plot.
In a critical book, Reading Mavis Gallant, Janice Kulyk Keefer says, “Gallant is a writer who dazzles us with her command of the language, her innovative use of narrative forms, the acuity of her intelligence, and the incisiveness of her wit. Yet she also disconcerts us with her insistence on the constrictions and limitations that dominate human experience.”
In a review of her work in Books in Canada in 1978, Geoff Hancock asserts that “Mavis Gallant's fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian. Names like Henry James, Chekhov, and George Eliot dance across the mind.”
Major works
Gallant has written two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1969) and A Fairly Good Time (1970); numerous celebrated collections of stories, The Other Paris (1956), My Heart is Broken (1964), The Pegnitz Junction (1973), The End of the World and Other Stories (1974), From the Fifteenth District (1978), Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris (1985), and In Transit (1988);
Current life
Although she maintains her Canadian citizenship, Gallant has lived in Paris, France since the 1950s.
Gallant's life in Paris is spent writing her stories and in participating in the occasional gallery opening and gala opening night exhibits. Gallant was honored at Symphony Space in New York City on November 1, 2006, in an event for Selected Shorts -- fellow authors Russell Banks, Jhumpa Lahiri and Michael Ondaatje honored her and read excerpts from her work, and Gallant herself made a rare personal appearance, reading one of her short stories in its entirety.
On November 8 2006, Mavis Gallant received the Athanase-David award from the government of her native province of Quebec.
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