Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell (born March 19, 1978) is an American poet, author, literary critic, and educator. He has published the novella Mitko (2011) and the novels What Belongs to You (2016) and Cleanness (2020). He has also published stories in The Paris Review[1] and A Public Space and writes criticism for The New Yorker[2] and The Atlantic.[3]

Garth Greenwell
Born	March 19, 1978 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Education	Interlochen Arts Academy
Alma mater	State University of New York at Purchase Washington University in St. Louis Harvard University
Occupation	Novelist
Known for	What Belongs to You

In 2013, Greenwell returned to the United States after living in Bulgaria to attend the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop as an Arts Fellow.

Early life

Garth Greenwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 19, 1978 and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, in 1996. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and received a BA degree in Literature with a minor in Lesbian and Gay Studies from the State University of New York at Purchase in 2001, where he served as a contributing editor for In Posse Review and received the 2000 Grolier Poetry Prize.[4][5] He received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, an MA in English and American Literature from Harvard University, and also began Ph.D. coursework there.

Career

Greenwell taught English at Greenhills, a private high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria; the school is famous for being the oldest American educational institution outside the US.[6] His frequent book reviews in the literary journal West Branch transitioned into a yearly column called "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry."[7][8][9]

Greenwell's first novella, Mitko, won the Miami University Press Novella Prize[10] and was a finalist for the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award as well as the Lambda Award.[10] His work has appeared in Yale Review,[11] Boston Review,[12] Salmagundi, Michigan Quarterly Review,[13] and Poetry International, among others.

His debut novel, What Belongs to You, was called the "first great novel of 2016" by Publishers Weekly.[14] His second novel, Cleanness, was published in January 2020 and well received by critics.[15][16][17]

Greenwell has 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.[18] He was the 2008 John Atherton Scholar for Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.[19]

LGBT rights advocacy in Bulgaria

In its article "Of LGBT, Life and Literature," the English-language weekly newspaper Sofia Echo credits Greenwell's publications with bringing much needed attention to the LGBT experience in Bulgaria and to other English-speaking audiences through various broadcasts, interviews, blog posts, and reviews.[20]

Bibliography

Novels

• What Belongs to You. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2016.[21]
  • UK: Picador, 2016.[22]
• Cleanness. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020.

Anthologies

• Kink, co-edited with R.O. Kwon. Simon & Schuster. 2021.[23]

Short fiction

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected	Notes
Mitko	2011	Mitko. Miami University Press. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4507-6214-4.		Novella
"An Evening Out"	2017	Greenwell, Garth (August 21, 2017). "An Evening Out". The New Yorker. 93 (24): 62–69.		Short story
"The Frog King"	2018	"The Frog King". The New Yorker. 94 (42): 74–81. November 26, 2018.		Short story
"Harbor"	2019	"Harbor". The New Yorker. September 16, 2019.		Short story

References

1. Greenwell, Garth (2014-01-01). "Gospodar". Paris Review (209). ISSN 0031-2037. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
2. "Garth Greenwell". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
3. Greenwell, Garth. "Garth Greenwell". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
4. In Posse: Potentially, might be... (http://webdelsol.com/InPosse/greenwell7.htm)
5. "Table of contents". disquietingmuses. Retrieved 2017-04-22.
6. "Faculty". acs.bg. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
7. "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry" (PDF).
8. Greenwell, Garth. "The First Thing and the Last" and "Two Elegists" in West Branch.
9. "Page Not Found! | Greenhills School". greenhillsschool.org. Retrieved 2016-03-24. Cite uses generic title (help)
10. "Miami University Press - Mitko".
11. Greenwell, Garth. 2010. "An Evening Out." The Yale Review, 92:2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2010-06-06. Retrieved 2011-12-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
12. Greenwell, Garth. "Facilitas", Boston Review. December 2004/January 2005.
13. Greenwell, Garth. 2008. "Likeness." Michigan Quarterly Review. Vol. XLVII, no. 4. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0047.405
14. Habash, Gabe (2015-12-04). "Staff Pick: 'What Belongs to You' by Garth Greenwell". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
15. Garner, Dwight (2020-01-13). "Sex, Violence and Self-Discovery Collide in the Incandescent 'Cleanness'". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-01-15.
16. Greenblatt, Leah (2020-01-14). "These gorgeous new novels explore sex with empathy, complexity, and radical honesty". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2020-01-15.
17. Hermann, Nellie (2020-01-10). "Review: Garth Greenwell's 'Cleanness' thrums with life's questions". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2020-01-15.
18. 2010 Bechtel Prize Winner was Garth Greenwell for "A Native Music: Writing the City in Sofia, Bulgaria." "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-08. Retrieved 2011-12-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
19. Biography, see "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-08. Retrieved 2011-12-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
20. "Of LGBT, Life and Literature." The Sofia Echo. June 17, 2011
21. What Belongs to You. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
22. "Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You". Picador. 2016-04-07. Archived from the original on 2017-06-13. Retrieved 2015-12-25.
23. Kink. 2021-02-09. ISBN 978-1-9821-1021-5.