Amy Hamm: Galloway's career collapse was 'heartbreaking,' publisher testifies - National Post

Steven Galloway (centre) walks out of BC Supreme Court in Vancouver, B.C., October 5, 2026. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNGArticle contentA publisher and editor of Steven Galloway’s books testified at his defamation trial Tuesday, telling the court that the November 2015 rape accusations against the author derailed his writing career “almost overnight.”

“We had to cancel festival engagements. Books were returned from the bookstores,” Louise Dennys told B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver. “It was extraordinary and I had not seen that before.”

Dennys testified from Toronto via videoconference. She is the founder of Knopf Canada, and the publisher emerita of Penguin Random House Canada. Dennys is described as a “hands-on” editor of several famous authors including Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie.

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Dennys described the 2015 public and unproven sexual assault allegations against Galloway as “inescapable in the media” and as having “blanketed the country, but obviously the literary community.” She told the court she went off social media in the wake of the allegations so that she could focus on her publishing requirements, but that it was “difficult to miss what was going on.”

She said she fielded numerous calls about Galloway “from publishers all over the world.” She described how bookstores didn’t want to display the author’s work, sent his books back to the publisher, and refused to do any re-orders.

A woman known only as A.B., due to a publication ban, accused the bestselling novelist and former University of British Columbia (UBC) professor of rape in 2015. The two had what Galloway testified was a two-year, consensual affair. Both were married and A.B., who was a student at the time, is older than Galloway. The unproven allegations were deemed not to have occurred by retired judge Mary Ellen Boyd, who investigated the matter on behalf of UBC.

Dennys said that she was involved in the editorial development of Galloway’s best-selling novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo and that she was then involved with editing, publishing, and marketing Galloway’s next novel, The Confabulist. Dennys described Galloway as a writer she expected to “write through to a lifetime of publishing good books.”

She said that the release of Boyd’s report, which ostensibly exonerated Galloway, “gave us the hope that the thing would die away completely.” Her publishing house signed a contract with Galloway “pretty much immediately” after the Boyd report came out, she testified, though it emerged that the accusations against Galloway were not, in fact, going anywhere. Galloway “remained persona non grata,” said Dennys.

She described that her company attempted to wait, putting Galloway’s next project—a three-book detective series—on hold. However, said Dennys, Galloway eventually admitted that he was so traumatized by what had happened that he had totally lost the ability to write.

“It was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve heard in my life as a publisher,” said Dennys.