I wrote about my favorites of 2025: 10 books, 4 movies, and songs by Cameron Winter, Lido Pimienta, & Big Thief. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/2025-favor...

I wrote about my favorites of 2025: 10 books, 4 movies, and songs by Cameron Winter, Lido Pimienta, & Big Thief. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/2025-favor...

I wrote about the books, movies, and music I loved in 2025. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/2025-favor...

Reading Augustine’s “Confessions” alongside @garthgreenwell.bsky.social & class really lifted my spirits (pun intended)

“Unable to slap the author until he explains, I can merely construe that he is still talking about the material elaboration of eternal abstractions.” the best footnote I’ve read in awhile (from Sarah Ruden’s translation of Augustine’s “Confessions”) (final @garthgreenwell.bsky.social class!)

ARCs for ONE MOMENT are in, & they’re beautiful. If you write about poetry for a print or online outlet, I’d love to get one to you. Just write to [email protected] with your address & possible venue for the review / interview / etc. I love these poems so much.

Cannot recommend Garth’s essay enough: it made me want to read the novel, which all good criticism should do…make you curious enough to engage. And then I went and read his work, too!

Very happy to see my essay on Miranda July & how to engage with art that offends us among the most-read prose of 2025 at The Yale Review. yalereview.org/article/gart... @yalereview.bsky.social

Great piece by Garth Greenwell on technique! O’Connor also said, “You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.” In Garth’s amazing class on Confessions, we’re seeing how St. Augustine got away with so much, influencing many modern writers.

My chapbook, coming out next month from CutBank Books, has a cover.

I wrote about the mystery of “technique” in writing, with help from the amazingly eloquent soprano Lisette Oropesa, who gives the best definition / demonstration of “craft” I’ve ever seen. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/what-even-...

Morning listen: @garthgreenwell.bsky.social on the Poured Over podcast (I’m excited to hear about the forthcoming essay collection 👀) youtu.be/mLIB9TsqgBg

I wrote about a wild interaction I had at a dinner party recently, & also the best explanation I’ve ever seen of what “technique” is in artmaking. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/what-even-...

Applications are open for the only non-NYU workshop I’m offering in 2026. It’s fully-funded, including transportation if you’re coming from the US. Link for more info: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

Lots of things came up in my conversation with Brandon Taylor at The Strand, including the importance of face-to-face encounters and the difference, for me, between art and politics. Free post, no paywall. Link in profile. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

Northern lights tonight in Iowa City.

I treated myself to the @garthgreenwell.bsky.social class on Augustine's Confessions and it is a treat indeed.

Incredible passage in Book 6 of Augustine’s “Confessions” where his friend, Alypius, nearly succumbs to sin by considering buying books at the discounted price offered to Imperial Administrators (lol) Absolutely digging this @garthgreenwell.bsky.social course!

Making my way through this extraordinary interview between @garthgreenwell.bsky.social and Brandon Taylor while I should be working, and this paragraph, about all the things that cut people off from each other, absolutely hit me in the face.

Ohhhhh, this right here is a literary convo I've been waiting for...

I thought Brandon might go easy on me at @strandbookstore.bsky.social a couple of weeks ago, but no luck: he came out swinging. We talk about ambient violence, art as individualizing, why we (sorry!) still need Heidegger, etc. Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

Last call for Daddy Augustine!

STARTING SATURDAY!

I can’t wait for this beautiful book to be in the world. Coming in May 2026: Luis Munoz’s ONE MOMENT, translated by Idra Novey & me. You can preorder it here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/One-Mo....

As someone who survived a major medical trauma, I really cannot recommend Small Rain enough. This book is a philosophical, nuanced, beautifully lyrical meditation on illness and survival and hope for what comes after. Heartfelt congrats @garthgreenwell.bsky.social on this deserved award!

One week until DADDY AUGUSTINE. Join us Nov 1 as we read the first two books of Confessions—the book that inaugurates the tradition that leads to the modern novel. 6 sessions, all recorded. Full info & registration here: www.garthgreenwell.com/classes-ig

Tonight!

The next picks for the To a Green Thought Book Club. In Dec, we’ll be reading KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN by Manuel Puig. Then, in Feb, COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD by Tezer Özlü. Open to all Founding Members. I’d love for you to join us. Full info here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/an-ideal-o...

Reading tonight @umassamherst.bsky.social. Full info here: www.umass.edu/english/even...

“Even the novel’s most rousing assertion of something like dignity presumes transience as a necessary condition of gay love.” @garthgreenwell.bsky.social on Giovanni’s Room.

I went to @icfilmscene.bsky.social's film festival & had some thoughts about Hedda, Romería, Peter Hujar’s Day, & several others. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/a-film-fes...

Friends in NYC, there are just a few tickets left for my event with Brandon Taylor. I’d love to see you at the Strand this Friday, 10/24, at 7pm. Chatting with Brandon is one of my favorite things; pretty sure this will be a blast. Get tix here: www.eventbrite.com/e/garth-gree...

I wanted to read @garthgreenwell.bsky.social’s reflections on “Giovanni’s Room,” not have them radiated at me, so I waited for three weeks until my local B&N had copy of @harpers.bsky.social.

Daddy Augustine starts in two weeks, on Nov 1. I’d love for you to join us as we read Confessions, with a focus on Augustine as a writer—as the great explorer of interiority. 6 online sessions, all recorded. Full info here: www.garthgreenwell.com/classes-ig

A beautiful explication of how St. Augustine’s style is just as formative as his content:

A superb reassessment of Baldwin's GIOVANNI'S ROOM, balancing attention to the novel's "negative" representation of homosexuality with a gorgeous close reading of the author's queer style. Invaluable contribution to debates about identity-based representation.

The great @garthgreenwell.bsky.social on St. Augustine open.substack.com/pub/garthgre...

Terrific essay by @garthgreenwell.bsky.social on Giovanni's Room and why the best art is anything but consoling share.google/N1ipypQilELA...

‘When I was a 14-year-old gay kid in the American South and pulled Baldwin’s novel off a bookstore shelf, it radically reoriented my relationship to dignity. The more I’ve read and taught the novel, the harder I’ve found this to explain.’ — @garthgreenwell.bsky.social harpers.org/archive/2025...

Very hard to believe it has been two years since the great poet Louise Glück died. Sharing again this remembrance I wrote then. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/rememberin...

On what makes Augustine so lovable, especially in the Confessions. No paywall. Link to full essay here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/marked-by-...

If nerdy close reading is your jam, please join us for Daddy Augustine, an online class exploring Confessions as the source of much of what is “modern” in the modern novel. 6 weeks, all classes recorded. Full info here: www.garthgreenwell.com/classes-ig

An astonishing essay by @garthgreenwell.bsky.social “Any art that excludes the irreparable excludes the possibility of genuine affirmation, as I’m trying to articulate it here; such art can only ever be propaganda for life, which can’t offer us any help at all.”

With three weeks until the start of my online class on Confessions, I spent some time analyzing a short passage to show why I think Augustine is such a great stylist, & what it means to read him *as a writer.* Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/marked-by-...

Beauford Delaney’s final self-portrait is a moving testament to his lifelong quest to accept his sexuality, especially when seen alongside his first portrait of James Baldwin. Free post; no paywall. Full essay here: garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/on-beaufor...

I really enjoyed talking shop about opera and writing with @kevinng.bsky.social for @parterrebox.bsky.social.

On Beauford Delaney’s “Dark Rapture”—his first, great portrait of James Baldwin. Link to full essay (free post, no paywall) garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/on-beaufor...

Truly excellent choices.

Garth Greenwell @garthgreenwell.bsky.social On Beauford Delaney. Courage & Desire in Baldwin's "Principal Witness". garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/on-beaufor...

I wrote about the great painter Beauford Delaney, his friendship with James Baldwin, & the tremendous courage of his wrestling with desire & selfhood. Free post, no paywall. garthgreenwell.substack.com/p/on-beaufor...