A Biography of Mavis Gallant

The Life of a Canadian Literary Icon

Jan 22, 2009

Although she has lived in Paris since 1950, Mavis Gallant remains one of Canada's most prolific and admired short story writers.

Mavis Gallant's Early Life

Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal in 1922 as an only child. Since the age of four, Gallant attended 17 different schools in Quebec, Ontario and the United States. The first school Gallant attended, a French-language convent school, was on the same street as her own home. Despite the proximity to her own home, she was a boarder at this school.

When Gallant was 10 years old, her father passed away while in England. It wasn't until the age of 13 that Gallant was told of her father's passing. Her mother later remarried.

From the Montreal Standard to the New Yorker

Fiercely independent and eager to live her own life devoted to writing, Gallant began her career in journalism at a young age at a time when women in the profession were uncommon. When she was 18 years old, she returned to Canada from New York, where she was attending school. She had an interview at the Montreal Standard, where she was told she was too young and advised to gain more experience. Gallant took a job with the National Film Board and, in 1944 at the age of 21, began working at the Standard as a feature reporter. At the age of 20, underage at the time, she married Winnipeg musician John Gallant, though the marriage ended in divorce after five years.

In 1950, Gallant moved to Europe, soon settling in France. Shortly thereafter, the New Yorker magazine published the first short story in what would become a 50-year relationship between Gallant and the esteemed publication. Gallant has published over 100 short stories, many of which were first seen in the New Yorker.

The Legacy of Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant’s elegantly-written stories about expatriates coming to terms with unfamiliar locales and situations have earned her many awards and accolades. In 1981, she was made Officer of the Order of Canada. The next year, she won the Governor-General's Award for Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories. Gallant returned to Canada briefly in 1983 when she served as writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. She has been the recipient of several other awards and prizes for her fiction. In 1993, Gallant was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.

Though not achieving notoriety in her home country until the 1970s, Mavis Gallant has become one of Canada’s most widely-respected writers of short fiction. Donna Coates, in her article for The Canadian Encyclopedia, notes Gallant’s focus “on expatriates . . . who have been displaced from their cultural milieu through choice or circumstance; lacking a clear sense of direction, they are adrift as permanent tourists, eking out miserable lives in run-down European hotels and pensions.” CBC journalist Eleanor Wachtel has said of Gallant’s prose, “There’s something just about perfect about it. Every word is right.”

Mavis Gallant Selected Bibliography

References:

The copyright of the article A Biography of Mavis Gallant in Canadian Fiction is owned by Samantha Garner. Permission to republish A Biography of Mavis Gallant in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.