Draft:Gary Zebrun

Novelist and poet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gary Zebrun lives in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a fiction writer and poet, and a former editor at The Providence Journal. He is a graduate of the Brown Graduate Writing Program and the recipient of Yaddo, MacDowell, and Breadloaf fellowships and has published poetry, fiction and nonfiction prose in the New York Times, the New Republic, Iowa Review, American Scholar, Sewanee Review, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers, The Common, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and elsewhere. His manuscript of poetry has been a finalist twice for the Walt Whitman Poetry Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.


Biography

Writing

His latest novel, HART ISLAND, from the University of Wisconsin Press, was published in 2024. It was a finalist for the 2025 Ferro-Grumley award for best LGBTQ novel, and a finalist for the Publishing Triangle 2025 Joseph Hansen Award. Among the writers who praised the novel are Jim Shepard who wrote: “Hart Island has all the pleasures of a thriller and expertly designed detective story, while it’s also the history of an arresting and forgotten place, a meditation on grief and the crisis of faith, a testament to loyalty and compassion, and a heartening celebration of the redemptive resilience of love.” Margot Livesey who said: “Beautiful, atmospheric, cunningly plotted. From the opening pages, I was transported into Sal Cusumano’s world as he makes his way back and forth to Hart Island, between the living and the dead. I couldn’t wait to discover what would happen next in this world full of violence and unexpected tenderness.” and Scott Hightower who wrote: “Every once in a while a novel comes along that has remarkable heart, that dares to set out to explore the mysterious ways, dark secrets, and truths of our humanity. In this exploration of love––in obedience, submission, betrayal, or action–– Zebrun weaves a tale of crime surrounded by the shimmer of law. In the end, his revelations are about forgiveness, not shame. Justice is fluid, as are many of the discovered boundaries of familial hearts that comprise this novel.”

Zebrun's first novel, SOMEONE YOU KNOW, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Novelist Edmund White wrote this about the debut: “Cool as witch hazel, frightening as a fresh body part … guaranteed to give you sleepless nights … If you’ve ever wondered what goes on inside those big old clapboard houses in Providence, Rhode Island, this beautifully crafted novel will give you the horrifying scoop.”

About his second novel, ONLY THE LONELY, Kirkus wrote, “[It] captivates through the complexity and vulnerability of its characters and the excellence of its prose, polished to a luminous transparency.”

Bibliography

Someone You Know (2004) ISBN-10 1555838383

Only the Lonely (2008) ISBN-10 159350084

Hart Island (2024) ISBN-10 0299348342

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferro-Grumley_Award

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hansen_Award

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th_Lambda_Literary_Awards

https://www.thecommononline.org/champagne-and-oysters/

https://www.buffalospree.com/app/buffalospreemagazine/archives/2008_10/1008books.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/02/opinion/the-russian-winters-of-buffal-o-ny-gary-zebrun.html

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