The literary agent for Steven Galloway said it would have been “impossible” to sell any new work by his client in the years after a former student made unproven allegations of rape and sexual assault against the author a decade ago.
Henry Dunow described what he viewed as the detrimental impact of the claims on Galloway’s “promising” career during a B.C. Supreme Court hearing in the author’s defamation lawsuit against his accuser and other defendants.
Dunow said he thought of Galloway as a literary “star” with a bright future ahead.
But the allegations, which emerged in 2015, derailed that trajectory, he said.
Galloway has filed the lawsuit against a woman known only as A.B. and multiple others. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
An author’s “social capital” and platform carry great importance in the industry, in a way more than the words on the page, Dunow told Monday’s hearing.
Galloway, the former chair of creative writing at the University of B.C., denies the allegations, and he was never charged.
He is suing his accuser, known as A.B., whose claims of rape and assault were found unsubstantiated by a former judge hired by the university.
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The lawsuit alleges A.B. and other defendants defamed Galloway by publishing the unproven allegations online and through other forums.
Several people originally named as defendants have settled with Galloway and offered public apologies.
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The court learned earlier this month that A.B. was no longer asserting in her defence that Galloway assaulted her, rather that she reported he had done so.
The woman, whose name is under a publication ban, is not testifying in the case, citing mental health struggles.
Galloway, the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo and The Confabulist, was fired by the university and has said his career was destroyed by the allegations.
He testified earlier this month that he could no longer write, his income from book royalties had “cratered” and he was selling boats for a living.
Dunow told Monday’s hearing that the allegations resulted in the cancellation of a $100,000 contract for a three-novel series Galloway pitched about a ventriloquist detective, meant to be a playful departure from his earlier, serious works.
He later agreed during cross-examination by A.B.’s lawyer Arden Beddoes that The Confabulist hadn’t met expectations following the success of The Cellist of Sarajevo, though he said a so-called “sophomore slump” was not uncommon.
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The New York-based agent said he believed A.B.’s allegations had also thwarted the realization of a film option of The Cellist of Sarajevo dating back to around 2011.
The case has drawn intense attention in the Canadian literary scene.
A group of authors, including Margaret Atwood, signed an open letter in November 2016 calling for an investigation into how the university handled Galloway’s case.
The court has previously heard that Galloway and A.B. had a two-year affair, which he has said ended in 2013.
Galloway testified she was a former student who was older than him, whom he’d met sometime in 2011 when she took a writing course from a colleague of his.
“I remain ashamed of having had an affair, period, let alone an affair with a student at the university I was at,” he told an earlier hearing. “I should not have been cheating on my wife, and I should have not been doing it with a student.”
A.B.’s former husband testified last week, called as a witness by Galloway’s lawyers.
Atwood has recently penned opinion articles supporting Galloway, writing in the Globe and Mail that testimony from A.B.’s ex-husband saying he was exchanging text messages with A.B. about a hockey game at the time of her alleged 2011 rape in Galloway’s office, was like the “Aha!” moment in a Sherlock Holmes novel.
