Garth Greenwell is a remarkable novelist. Like vocal lines, his sentences explode with vibrating, irrepressible energy while still assuming classically beautiful forms. What Belongs To You (2016), his debut novel, about collisions between guilt, grief, desire, and openness in the relationship between an American high school teacher and a Bulgarian hustler, was long-and short-listed for several prestigious awards and has been widely translated. Greenwell followed an untraditional path towards prose writing, including stints as a teacher, poet, academic, and singer. We spoke on the phone this winter about his formative experiences hearing and making music, and about the similarities between bringing prosodic and musical shapes out of the body and into the world.
Unlimited access to our
