Garth Greenwell

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] Greenwell is currently an Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Early years

Garth Greenwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1978 and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, 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. Currently, he teaches at the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria; the school is famous for being the oldest American educational institution outside the Us.[10] His frequent book reviews in the literary journal West Branch transitioned into a yearly column called "To a Green Thought: Garth Greenwell on Poetry."[11][12][13]

Mitko Book Cover.
Mitko, Greenwell's first book

Mitko won the 2010 Miami University Press Novella Prize, was a finalist for the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award as well as the Lambda Award. [14][15]

LGBT rights advocacy in Bulgaria

f LGBT, Life and Literature.
The Sofia Echo, feature article on Garth Greenwell's literary impact in Bulgaria.

In its article, "Of LGBT, Life and Literature," the 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.[16]

References