Lannan Foundation

Mavis Gallant, born in Canada, was dispatched at four to her first boarding school. In her 20s, she worked as a journalist before moving to Paris in 1950. She is the author of three novels and thirteen collections of short stories. A master of the latter form, her stories are witty, sharp, and polished and frequently play with the balance between real and believed or altered memory.

At 81, she is still writing fiction and editing her journals, her observations of Europe for 50 years, for publication. Gallant’s current editor at The New Yorker, Daniel Manaker, says of her work, “Writers of her caliber in any given genre are three or four a century.” She herself says, “Literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death.”