Garth Greenwell (born 1978) is an American poet, author, literary critic, and educator. His first book, Mitko,[1] won the Miami University Press Novella Prize.[2] His work has appeared in Yale Review,[3] Boston Review,[4] Salmagundi, Michigan Quarterly Review,[5] and Poetry International, among others.
He 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.[6] He was the 2008 John Atherton Scholar for Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.[7]
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Garth Greenwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1978 and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1996. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and received a BA 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.[8][9] 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.
He taught English at a private high school in Michigan. His frequent book reviews in the literary journal West Branch transitioned into a yearly column called "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry." [10][11][12]
Mitko won the Miami University Press Novella Prize.[13][14]
Synopsis: On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American newly arrived in a foreign city pays a young man for sex. Over the next months, as what at first seems an uncomplicated transaction deepens into something more intricate and unnerving, his discovery of the geography and griefs of an unfamiliar country is accompanied by the unfolding of Mitko's own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want.
The story of a desire that grows increasingly ambivalent, poised between submission, need, and resentment, Mitko is a powerful meditation on the chances of history and privilege, on mutual predation, and on our inability to know with any certainty the natures of others or our own fugitive selves.[15][16][17]
“Mitko is a novella of astonishing force and poignance, and Garth Greenwell’s Sofia, Bulgaria, brings to mind Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin or the Saigon of Marguerite Duras.” —Honor Moore, author of The Bishop’s Daughter
“In Mitko Garth Greenwell displays a dazzling ability to negotiate the shadowy boundary between lust and longing. The story is thoroughly modern, but the elegance of his style, his devotion to his characters, and his Jamesian skill in parsing emotions give this narration a timeless quality. A splendid debut.” —Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
“Mitko is a haunting and compelling meditation on erotic obsession, loneliness, and power. Garth Greenwell writes with the intensity and urgency of a poet, and his novella takes on the weight and impact of a much longer work of fiction.” —Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection
“[Greenwell's] craft, authority, and wry observations all confirm the arrival of an exceptional talent…. Get this novella strictly for your enjoyment and illumination. But, if you happen to have been born with an ego, you will also enjoy, as the years pass and future, longer Greenwell books stack up, being able to say you’ve been reading him since Mitko's debut.” Stephen Bottum, Band of Thebes.
“Like the fine poet he is (this is his first novel), [Greenwell] sets his seismograph to capture the slightest tremors and shifts of a contrived relationship built on and generating very real desires, thoughts, and emotions. These tremors and shifts are indeed slight, gestures and revelations all perfectly common, yet Greenwell can tenderly probe the way eyes meet, the timing of when we get into or out of bed, or the way we feel our way toward a self-destructive choice, and suddenly our own grubby desires and habits feel new and, most importantly, worthy of notice, explication, and forgiveness.” David Pratt, Out in Print.
“…a novella of sexual passion and transaction in Bulgaria, which calls to mind the richly textured fictions of Imre Kertesz, W.G. Sebald, and Marguerite Duras.” Kyle Minor, The Rumpus.
“In Mitko [Greenwell] displays lavish talents and some jarringly clear insights into the squalor and odd nobility of lust. The book is a memorable success and a debut not to be missed.” Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly.
Peter Cameron named Mitko as one of his favorite books of 2011 on the Band of Thebes blog after Stephen Bottum reviewed the book for the same source.
David Pratt reviewed Mitko on Out in Print on November 3, 2011.
Shara Lessley of The Rumpus interviewed Garth on September 2, 2011.
Carole Giangrande reviewed Mitko alongside a previous Miami University Press Novella winner on her blog, The Thoughtful Blogger on July 29, 2011. Listen to her podcast, beginning at 20:20.
Open Letters Monthly reviewed Mitko in July, 2011.
In 2007, Bulgaria was proclaimed the "European Union country whose attitudes about homosexuality have progressed the least since the Middle Ages."[18] This winner of "the race to the bottom," came after ILGA-Europe submitted a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council to draw attention to "human rights concerns affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Bulgaria."[19] Until recently, only one openly gay author published poetry written in Bulgarian.
In its article, "Of LGBT, Life and Literature," the Sofia Echo credits Greenwell's publications with bringing much needed attention to the LGBT experience inBulgaria and to other English speaking audiences through various broadcasts, interviews, blog posts, and reviews.[20]