You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Joanne O'Leary and my guest today is Tessa Hadley.

She's the author of nine novels and four collections of short stories, including accidents in the

home, late in the day and after the funeral. Her most recent novel, The Party, was published

by Vintage last year and is now available in paperback. Tessa has been a regular writer for the LRB for more than 20

years, contributing pieces on figures such as Elizabeth Bowen, Merlin Robinson, Alice Monroe and

Michael Ondatchy, to name just a few. But today we're going to talk about the Canadian writer Mavis

Galant, who Tessa wrote about in the latest issue of the paper. It's a review of Galant's

uncollected stories which came out with New York Review books in January, and of her novel Greenwater,

Green Sky, first published in 1959 and reissued by Don't last year. Tessa has also edited and

introduced her own selection of Galant's stories, which will be published by Pushkin Press next month.

Tessa, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

It's a pleasure.

Mavis Gallant was born in Montreal in 1922 and is best known as a short storywriter.

There have been various selections and collections of her work

published over the past 30 years and she does appear to be undergoing a sort of renaissance right now.

But she's one of those writers, I think, whose reputation could still be described as that

of a writer's writer. So Tessa, I wonder if you could get things rolling by

giving us a brief biographical outline of Galant's life for listeners who are unfamiliar with her.

She's born in Montreal, in Canada in 1922. She's born to a English Protestant family. I'm not sure

they actually had any religion much,

but they're certainly not Catholics. And so they're surrounded by French Montreal Catholics.

She's an only child. Her parents are rather glamorous. She adores her father who would like

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