Gallant, Mavis (Mavis Leslie Young Gallant) [key], 1922–2014, Canadian writer, b. Montreal. After graduating from high school, she was a newspaper feature writer in Montreal (1944–50), moved (1950) to Europe, and ultimately settled in Paris, where she lived until her death. Acclaimed for her mastery of the short story, her first published work appeared in Canadian publications such as Preview (1944) and Northern Review (1950). In 1951 her work first appeared in The New Yorker, which eventually published more than 100 pieces of her short fiction. Gallant's many stories are unsentimental, wry, and meticulously observed, with touches of dry humor; they feature exquisitely detailed characters, whether homebodies or expatriates, in clearly delineated settings. Among her story collections are The Other Paris (1956), My Heart Is Broken (1964), From the Fifteenth District (1979), Home Truths (1981), In Transit (1988), Across the Bridge (1993), Paris Stories (2002), and Montreal Stories (2004). Her Collected Stories was published in 1996, Selected Stories the following year. Gallant also wrote two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1959) and A Fairly Good Time (1970); one play, What Is to Be Done? (1982); and many pieces of nonfiction, including those collected in Paris Notebooks: Essays and Reviews (1986).
See studies by N. K. Besner (1988), J. K. Keefer (1989), L. D. Clement (2000), K. E. Smythe (1992), D. Schaub (1998), N. Coté and P. Sabor, ed. (2002), and K. Gunnars, ed. (2004).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: English Canadian Literature: Biographies
