Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), 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 was the author of two novels and fourteen collections of short stories. A master of the latter form, her stories were witty, sharp, and polished and frequently played with the balance between real and believed or altered memory.
Gallant’s editor at The New Yorker, Daniel Manaker, said of her work, “Writers of her caliber in any given genre are three or four a century.” She herself said, “Literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death.”