Mavis Gallant, a legendary writer born in Montreal, has died. She was 91-years-old. She was best known for her short fiction stories, which were frequently published by the New Yorker. Although born in Canada, she lived most of her life in Paris.
Her Canadian publisher announced her death today, notes The Los Angeles Times.
Mavis Leslie Young was born in 1922 and first began writing as a journalist during World War II. She married musician John Gallant in 1942 and they split after five years. She moved to Europe in 1950.
As the Canadian Press notes, many of her best known collections are The Other Paris, In Transit and Across the Bridge. She also penned the novels Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time. She did write a play, What is to be Done?.
Gallant was still beloved in Canada, earning honors such as the Companion of the Order of Canada and the Governor General's Literary Award for 1981’s Home Truths.
According to CBC, Gallant was known for being a perfectionist, scrapping complete pages if she didn’t like a sentence.
“The first flash of fiction is like a curtain going up on stage, and you wait to see what's happening,” she said during a 2009 Guardian interview. “The characters aren't speaking to me, exactly, but I get lines of dialogue. I know who they are, what they do and what they are saying to each other. And I know more than they do, because I know about all of them.”
image courtesy of Amazon