My first MFA was in poetry, and it was very much part of a professional trajectory leading to life as a professor. But in my second and third years a…

- Garth Greenwell

I do think that the sense of being opposed to the present moment, that sense of the rub of history, invigorates the writing I find most exciting, and…

- Garth Greenwell

I'm not sure any narrative model has been more important for me than Benjamin Britten's chamber operas.

- Garth Greenwell

I think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question your right to exis…

- Garth Greenwell

When I took my first poetry class, I felt that I could understand the relationships between words and the formal qualities of language in a way I wou…

- Garth Greenwell

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than…

- Garth Greenwell

Woolf is an important writer for me, someone I read often and who forms part of my ideal of what literature can do.

- Garth Greenwell

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

- Garth Greenwell

There are lots of big books that have gay characters - or, more commonly, a gay character - in secondary roles, but seldom are their lives, and espec…

- Garth Greenwell