Memory and Invention | Mavis Gallant | Granta Magazine

Memory and Invention

Mavis Gallant

‘When I happened to be working all day, every day, on a story set in the Paris of 1953, I was stunned and bewildered to step outside and discover the shape of the cars, the casual clothing and clean facades of the 1990s.’

Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal in 1922. When she was twenty-eight she gave up her job as a journalist, moved to Paris and devoted herself to writing fiction. In 1951 she published her first short story in The New Yorker. Since then she has published over twelve collections of stories, two novels, a volume of non-fiction, Paris Notebooks: Essays and Reviews, and a play. A selection of her work from 1951-71, The Cost of Living, was published in 2009.

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