Garth Greenwell

Garth Greenwell is the author of the acclaimed novel Cleanness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and France’s Prix Sade. It was named a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Critics Top 10 Book of the Year, and a Best Book of 2020 by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and more than 30 other publications.

Greenwell’s first novel, What Belongs to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, was praised as “the great gay novel for our times” by the New Republic.

Greenwell holds graduate degrees from Harvard University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; the University of Mississippi; Grinnell College; and NYU. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, he received the 2021 Harold D. Vursell Award for distinguished prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Iowa City.