American writer and teacher Garth Greenwell was BOTD in 1978. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he came out as gay as a teenager and was banished from his family home. He trained as an opera singer in Michigan, before studying literature and creative writing at SUNY Purchase, Washington University and Harvard. He spent several years teaching English in Bulgaria, which formed the basis of his first novella Mitko, the story of an American teacher who forms a sado-masochistic relationship with a Bulgarian hustler. He returning to the United States in 2013 to attend the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first novel, What Belongs to You was published in 2016, expanding on his Mitko narrative. Critically praised for his ornate prose and forensic understanding of queer desire, his work was compared to gay prose stylists Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst. His second novel Cleanness was published in 2020, followed by Small Rain in 2024. A regular contributor to New Yorker magazine, he also co-edited the 2021 short story anthology Kink with R. O. Kwon. He lives in New York, where he teaches creative writing at Princeton University.