Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 19, 1978. He attended duPont Manual High School in Louisville and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, in 1996. He went on to study voice at the Eastman School of Music, then transferred to earn a BA degree in Literature with a minor in Lesbian and Gay Studies from the State University of New York at Purchase in 2001. He then received an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, and an MA in English and American Literature from Harvard University, where he also spent three years doing Ph.D. coursework.^[10] In 2015, he received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.^[11][12]

Early in his career, Greenwell taught English at Greenhills School, a private high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria; the oldest American educational institution outside the US.^[13] His frequent book reviews in the literary journal West Branch transitioned into a yearly column called "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry."^[14][15][16] In 2013, Greenwell returned to the United States after living in Bulgaria to attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop as an Arts Fellow.

For his poetry, he received the Grolier Prize, the Rella Lossy Award, an award from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, and the Bechtel Prize from the Teachers & Writers Collaborative.^[17] He was the 2008 John Atherton Scholar for Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.^[17] Greenwell's first novella, Mitko, won the Miami University Press Novella Prize^[18] and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award^[19] as well as the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction.^[18]

His debut novel, What Belongs to You, was called the "first great novel of 2016" by Publishers Weekly.^[20] The book follows an American teacher who meets a charismatic young sex-worker and becomes ensnared in a relationship of mutual predation and romance. It won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, among several other prizes.

Greenwell's second novel, Cleanness, was published in January 2020 and was well received by critics.^[21][22][23] It was a New York Times Notable Book and chosen by Dwight Garner as one of the Top Ten Book of the Year, as well as named a Best Book of the Year by over 30 Publications.^[24][25] Longlisted for the Prix Sade, the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, and the Gordon Burn Prize, the book showcases the same American teacher from Greenwell's debut novel, What Belongs to You, as he navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love.

In 2024, Greenwell published his third novel, Small Rain, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award.^[26] It was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, and many other publications.^[27] It follows the same narrator from Greenwell's previous two books, who undergoes a health crisis and is hospitalized  in the ICU.^[28] Confined to bed, the narrator is plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[29] In The Chicago Tribune, John Warner called the book "One of the most profound reading experiences I've ever had."^[30]

Greenwell is also active as a critic. His essay "A Moral Education", on Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, was widely discussed, receiving "a rapturous reception," according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.^[30][4] He has also written on Andrew Holleran, Raven Leilani, Pedro Lemebel, and Georgi Gospodinov, among others.^{[31][32][33][34]} Since November 2022 he has written essays about visual art, film, music, and literature for the Substack newsletter To a Green Thought. His essay on Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, first published in To a Green Thought, was reprinted in The Point.^[35]

What Belongs to You was adapted as a 2021 opera by composer/librettist David T. Little. The premiere production was by Mark Morris, starring Karim Sulayman as the narrator, and conducted by Alan Pierson.^[51]