NYRB is saddened by the death of Mavis Gallant, beloved author of the NYRB Classics Paris Stories, Varieties of Exile, and The Cost of Living, this past week.
Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal and worked as a journalist at the Montreal Standard before moving to Europe to devote herself to writing fiction. After traveling extensively she settled in Paris, where she lived until the end of her life. She was the recipient of the 2002 Rea Award for the Short Story and the 2004 PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement.
Mavis Gallant will be remembered as an enduring and legendary author, a contributor to The New Yorker for close to fifty years, and as a writer whose work brims with innovation, insight, heartbreak, mystery, and wit.