"Meticulously constructed … timeless and unforgettable…"
—Jane Urquhart

In the stories that make up In Transit, internationally acclaimed writer Mavis Gallant describes with elegant and scrupulous precision-and a discerning eye for telling detail-the quirks of human nature and the limits of human compassion. A host of remarkably drawn characters are surveyed with a cool wit and sophisticated intelligence as they struggle to transcend the imprisonment of their provisional lives. Sometimes direct, sometimes tantalizingly oblique, Mavis Gallant's finely textured writing demonstrates once again that she is a master of contemporary prose.

 Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) once told an interviewer that she could no more stop being Canadian than she could change the colour of her eyes. Born in Montreal, she left a career as a leading journalist in that city to move to Paris in 1950 to write.

She published stories on a regular basis in The New Yorker, many of which were anthologized. Her worldwide reputation was established by books such as From The Fifteenth District and Home Truths, which won the Governor General’s Award in 1982. In that same year she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, becoming a Companion of the Order in 1993, the year she published Across the Bridge and was the recipient of a special tribute at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto. She received several honorary degrees from Canadian universities and remained a much sought-after public speaker.

Mavis Gallant's profile page

Jane Urquhart was born in the far north of Ontario. She is the author of eight internationally acclaimed novels, among them The Whirlpool, which received France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Away, winner of the Trillium Award, The Underpainter, winner of the Governor General’s Award and a finalist for the Orange Prize in the UK and The Stone Carvers, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award and Britain’s Booker Prize. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction and four books of poetry. She has written a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery and was editor of the Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories. Her work, which is published in many countries, has been translated into numerous foreign languages. Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award and the Harbourfront Festival Prize. She is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Urquhart has received ten honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario and the Royal Military College of Canada. She has served on the Board of PEN Canada, on the Advisory Board for the Restoration of the Vimy Memorial and on several international prize juries including that of the International Dublin IMPAC Award, the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the American International Neustadt Award.

Her most recent novel, The Night Stages, was released in 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US, McClelland and Stewart in Canada and Oneworld in the UK.

Urquhart lives in southeastern Ontario with her husband, artist Tony Urquhart.

Jane Urquhart's profile page