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Author and former University of British Columbia professor Steven Galloway and his wife Katie Wagner leave B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver during a lunch break at his defamation lawsuit on Tuesday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Steven Galloway’s follow-up to The Cellist of Sarajevo sold a fraction of the copies that the 2008 international bestseller had, and he received much lower Canadian advances for his next planned endeavour.
But Mr. Galloway testified in British Columbia Supreme Court Friday that these metrics don’t prove his career as a writer was on the downslope before a former student’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her led to his suspension from teaching in 2015 and near-immediate exile from Canada’s literary world.
During the first day of his cross-examination at the defamation trial he has been pursuing for eight years, the former chair of University of British Columbia’s creative-writing program disputed the assertion by a defendant’s lawyer that 2014’s The Confabulist was a flop for selling 8,390 total copies in Canada compared with the 132,256 of his smash hit.
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“Cellist was a zeitgeist book, and this was just a book,” he explained to Arden Beddoes, lead counsel for the woman who made the allegations, known only as A.B. because of a publication ban on her name.
Mr. Beddoes took the novelist through months of financial records and posited that sales had already fallen off before his client’s allegations ignited an online and industry firestorm over his suspension and eventual dismissal from UBC.
Mr. Galloway pushed back, saying The Confabulist had not enjoyed a run of success from paperback sales because these books were put on stands around the time of his fall from grace.
“It had a paperback life without an author,” he said.
Mr. Galloway maintained that his sales had “cratered” because of the allegations made by A.B., whom he is suing for defamation along with three other women who publicly repeated the allegations of sexual assault.
The trial will not hear testimony from A.B. Mr. Beddoes told the court that her defence no longer includes an assertion that she was assaulted, but rather that she reported the alleged assaults. Mr. Beddoes has said A.B. has twice tried to kill herself in recent months because of the stress of the ordeal.
A retired judge hired by the university to investigate her complaint found that, on a balance of probabilities, it could not be established that he committed sexual assault or assault. Mr. Galloway was never charged with a crime, but he was fired without severance in 2016 due to breach of trust.
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Earlier Friday, Mr. Galloway testified that there was no official prohibition on sexual relationships between students and faculty, and that he knows of “numerous instances” of similar relationships in the university’s faculty of arts.
He testified that it was normal for other professors to attend a regular night at a Vancouver legion to hang out and drink with students.
Mr. Beddoes questioned Mr. Galloway about a voicemail that he left for A.B. shortly before his suspension that offered an apology that said he was ashamed and was working to be a better person and “turn over a new leaf.”
He told the court that he is ashamed for having an affair with the student and cheating on his then-wife, but he didn’t think he would be fired for violating the university’s conflict-of-interest policy.
The court heard how in November, 2015, Mr. Galloway had repeatedly called both A.B. and fellow faculty member Keith Maillard, whom had received an e-mail where A.B. had described feeling at risk and “unsafe.”
Mr. Beddoes suggested that the numerous calls were Mr. Galloway “panicking,” but Mr. Galloway said that he wanted to disclose the pair’s past affair himself to Mr. Maillard, a mentor and “father figure.”
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Mr. Galloway testified that no other faculty members had ever been terminated for similar conduct, though he says he should not have cheated on his wife, especially with a student.
Mr. Beddoes asked Mr. Galloway if he kept having sexual relationships with students, bringing up the fact that his current wife, screenwriter Katie Wagner, met him while attending the creative-writing program. But Mr. Galloway said she had not been a student for “well over a year” when they got together.
The original defamation suit included almost two dozen defendants, most of whom settled. Only A.B. and three others remain: Mandi Gray, Dana Kagis and Glynnis Kirchmeier.
Lawyers for the defendants will resume their cross-examination of Mr. Galloway on Tuesday.
With reports from The Canadian Press