Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant published a hundred and sixteen stories in The New Yorker before her death, in 2014, at the age of ninety-one. Born in Montreal, Gallant lived most of her life in varieties of exile, to borrow the title of one of her works; after an itinerant childhood–she attended seventeen schools within the span of eight years–and a brief career as a journalist, she devoted herself to fiction full-time in 1950, publishing her first story for The New Yorker, “Madeline’s Birthday,” in 1951, and moving to Europe, where she eventually settled in Paris, her home for the rest of her life. Through her long and productive tenure at The New Yorker, which lasted for four decades, Gallant also submitted regular dispatches on French politics and culture, including her journals reporting on the student uprisings in 1968. In her short stories, she turned her sharp eye and often heartbreaking wit on the cultural and social mores of both her homeland and her adopted country. She also published novels, essays, and a play; several excerpts from her diaries have appeared in The New Yorker.