Garth Greenwell: Inspired by move to Bulgaria

Garth Greenwell was deeply engaged with poetry, as a writer and a scholar. But a move overseas provoked a change.

'Something about moving to Bulgaria, I don't know what, made me start hearing sentences that weren't broken into lines,” Greenwell said during an interview in Iowa City, where he resides.

He would work on those sentences in the early morning before heading to the Anglo-American School of Sofia where he was teaching.

'I was just living in the world of this book and writing a few sentences a day,” he said.

Those sentences coalesced into a novella. 'Mitko” won the 2010 Miami University Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Award.

Greenwell was pleased with the novella's success, and was planning to turn his attention to other writing projects. But then one day, while walking in Sofia, 'I was seized by this voice. I don't know how else to say it.”

He ducked into a cafe and began writing on whatever scraps of paper - receipts, napkins - that came to hand. As the words continued to come, he realized he was writing the early experiences of the narrator of 'Mitko.”

That text would become the stunning middle section of Greenwell's debut novel, 'What Belongs to You” (see related review). The first section would be a slightly altered version of the novella; the third section would bring the character of Mitko back on stage and resume the story of his relationship with the narrator.

'It wasn't until I had the full manuscript that I realized that, no, this isn't three separate things,” Greenwell explained. He came to believe 'there's a kind of gravity holding these pieces together.”

While much of the work on the book took place in Bulgaria, the novel was workshopped in Lan Samantha Chang's class in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Greenwell credits Chang - 'Certainly the most exceptional teacher of writing I've had” - and her 'generosity and rigor” with helping him grow as a writer.

Greenwell might never have been a workshop student if not for the kindness of Deb West, an administrator in the program. Greenwell mailed his workshop application - complete with cover letter, application fee, statement of purpose, and manuscript - from Bulgaria. The package didn't fare well on its long journey, arriving in Iowa City torn open with only the cover letter and application fee inside. West immediately contacted Greenwell, instructing him to email his manuscript right away.

'That she took the time to write that email blows my mind,” Greenwell said. 'She's my angel.”

Greenwell's prose style is lovely and rich; he credits a variety of influences for helping him find his voice. For many years, he was a singer, studying opera and art song at both Interlochen Center for the Arts and, briefly, the Eastman School of Music, and he believes those art forms inform his writing.

His love of poetry, and in particular, 'poets who have sort of an eccentric approach to English,” also underpins his prose. And he identifies strongly with the 'tradition of the novel of consciousness” associated with writers like Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Virginia Wolfe, Thomas Bernard and others.

He connects that tradition to what he calls 'a tradition of queer writing that is absolutely essential to me as a writer and as a human being.” But while he feels 'a desire and obligation to represent queer lives to queer readers,” he hopes his work reaches readers of all sorts as he delves deeply into individual experience. 'It is through the particular that we reach the universal.”

Greenwell is at work on a short story collection that will feature several of the characters from 'What Belongs to You.” His next novel will be set in Kentucky, where he grew up, and that work, too, will likely connect to 'What Belongs to You.”

'What interests me as a writer is not really invention, but rather exploration,” he said, suggesting that his work might be thought of as existing on a vertical rather than a horizontal plane. 'I want to go as deeply as I can” into the world he has created.

'There are things that I need to think about in that world that don't fit into the novel,” he said. 'That doesn't exhaust the world.”

Book reading

' What: Garth Greenwell reads from 'What Belongs to You”

' Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

' When: 7 p.m. Jan. 21

' Admission: Free