James Gallant

James Gallant, born in 1937, died of cancer on September 25, 2024.  He was husband for 63 years to Christine Gallant, English Professor Emerita of Georgia State University. Their daughter Sarah lives with her spouse, Gail Zarbin, near Chicago, Illinois.

Jim was born in Ohio. He received his M.A. degree in English from the University of Minnesota, and taught English for many years at Mount Union College in Ohio, and the University of Evansville in Indiana. But he was best known as a widely published writer of short fiction, essays, two novels, and a collection of short stories.  His first publication was as an undergraduate in Riverside Poetry 4 (Twayne Publishers, 1961). His first novel was The Big Bust at Tyrone’s Rooming House:A Novel of Atlanta (Glad Day Books, 2003); and his second was  Whatever Happened to Ohio? (Vagabondage Press, 2018). Jim was also a regular contributor to the Fortnightly Review (U.K.), which published his book Verisimilitudes: Essays and Approximations (2018). His last book was La Leona and other Guitar Stories (Schaffner Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature.

Jim best expressed why writing has been central to his life in his 2023 essay “What Am I Doing?” in Philosophy Now (Issue 153, “The Creativity Issue”). “I have been writing fiction, prose-poetry, and essays for a long time now, whenever the business of staying alive has allowed. I have published quite a lot, including four books. I do not self-publish.

“…The Italian Renaissance poet Girolamo Fracastoro characterized the reward at the end of the process of writing as a feeling of ‘a certain wonderful and almost divine harmony.’ This harmonious feeling …is, I think, the reward of creative life (at least mine) which renders the improbable rewards of other kinds incidental and unnecessary. … Whatever metaphysical significance can be attributed to this passion for harmony, that people like myself should embrace this ideal and find it sufficient, irrespective of external reward, and pursue it into obscurity and even poverty as if anticipating an eternal reward, is certainly curious, if not positively mad.”

At Jim’s request, there will be his cremation but no funeral or memorial service.

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