Garth Greenwell (born March 19, 1978) is an American novelist, literary critic, and educator. He has published the novels What Belongs to You (2016), which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year; Cleanness (2020); and Small Rain (2024), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has also published the novella Mitko (2011), as well as stories and criticism in The Paris Review, A Public Space, The Yale Review, The New Yorker and The Atlantic.

Among other prizes, he was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. He was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Early life and education 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 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. In 2015, he received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Retrieved 2026-05-03. Retrieved 2026-05-03.

Career 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. His frequent book reviews in the literary journal West Branch transitioned into a yearly column called "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry."Greenwell, Garth. "The First Thing and the Last" and "Two Elegists" in West Branch. 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. He was the 2008 John Atherton Scholar for Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Greenwell's first novella, Mitko, won the Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award as well as the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction.

His debut novel, What Belongs to You, was called the "first great novel of 2016" by Publishers Weekly. 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. It was a New York Times Notable Book and chosen by Dwight Garner as one of the Top Ten Books of the Year, as well as named a Best Book of the Year by over 30 Publications. 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. 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. It follows the same narrator from Greenwell's previous two books, who undergoes a health crisis and is hospitalized in the ICU. Confined to bed, the narrator is plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic. In The Chicago Tribune, John Warner called the book "One of the most profound reading experiences I've ever had."

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. He has also written on Andrew Holleran, Raven Leilani, Pedro Lemebel, and Georgi Gospodinov, among others. 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.

Awards and recognition

Literary prizes YearTitleAwardCategoryResultRef.2010MitkoMiami University Press Novella PrizeNovella Retrieved 2026-05-06.2012Edmund White AwardDebut Fiction Retrieved 2026-05-06.Lambda Literary AwardsDebut Fiction 2016What Belongs to YouCenter for Fiction First Novel Prize— Retrieved 2026-05-19.Green Carnation Prize— Retrieved 09-27-2026.James Tait Black Memorial PrizeFiction Retrieved 2026-05-19.National Book AwardFiction Retrieved 2026-05-19.2017British Book AwardsDebut of the Year Retrieved 2026-05-19.Lambda Literary AwardsGay Fiction Retrieved 2026-05-19.Los Angeles Times Book PrizeFiction Retrieved 2026-05-19.PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction— Retrieved 2026-05-19.2018International Dublin Literary Award— Retrieved 2026-05-19.2020CleannessGordon Burn Prize— Retrieved 2026-05-19.Lambda Literary AwardsGay Fiction Retrieved 2026-05-19.L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize— Retrieved 2026-05-19.2021Le Prix Sade— 2024Small RainNational Book Critics Circle AwardFiction Retrieved 2026-05-05.2025PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction— Retrieved 2026-05-04.PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award— Retrieved 2026-05-19.

Other things YearAwards2021 Harold D. Vursell Memorial Prize, for distinguished prose style, The American Academy of Arts and Letters2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Monroe K Spears Prize for best essay published in 2020, The Sewanee Review2016 OUT 100 Honoree, Out Magazine2010 Bechtel Prize for writing on literary arts education, selected by Phillip Lopate, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2010  2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation2001 Rella Lossy Poetry Award, Poetry Center & American Poetry Archive, SFSU

Bibliography

Novels

Anthologies (edited) Kink, co-edited with R. O. Kwon. Simon & Schuster. 2021.

Short fiction YearTitleShort stories unless otherwise noted.First publishedReprinted/collectedNotes2011Mitko Novella2014Gospodar"Gospodar". The Paris Review, Vol. 209. 2014.2017An Evening Out 2018The Frog King 2019Harbor

Essays and reporting

To a Green Thought: A newsletter on art and culture On Edmund White's Nocturnes for the King of Naples, The New Yorker, 28 May 2024 On Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance, The Yale Review, 9 July 2024 On Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, The Yale Review, 10 Dec. 2024 On Andrew Holleran's Kingdom of Sand, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022 On a Sentence by Raven Leilani, The Sewanee Review, Spring 2022 On Ceirra Evans, The New Yorker, 15 Feb. 2022 On John Brooks, The New Yorker, 14 Sept. 2021 Making Meaning: On Relevance in Art, Harper's Magazine, 15 Oct. 2020 On Writing Sex, The Guardian, May 2020 On Mark McKnight, GQ, 29 Sept. 2020, On Caleb Crain's Overthrow, The New Yorker, 28 Aug. 2019, "Get out of town : 'The end of Eddy', a novel of class and violence in the provinces". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 93 (12): 62–65. May 8, 2017.

Adaptations

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.

Notes

References

External links

Paris Review interview, 2020.