Dwight Garner

Garner's previous post at The New York Times was as senior editor of The New York Times Book Review, where he worked from 1999 to 2008. He was a founding editor of Salon.com,[http://www.harpercollins.com/Author/Tour.aspx?authorID=33952 Author bio] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121021190623/http://www.harpercollins.com/Author/Tour.aspx?authorID=33952 |date=October 21, 2012 }} at HarperCollins where he worked from 1995 to 1998. His monthly column in Esquire magazine{{Cite web|url=https://www.esquire.com/author/2352/dwight-garner/|title=Dwight Garner|website=Esquire}} was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in 2017.https://asme.magazine.org/about-asme/pressroom/asme-press-releases/asme/ellies-2017-finalists-announced {{Dead link|date=February 2022}}

His essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, the Oxford American, Slate, The Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, The Nation, and elsewhere. For several years he wrote the program notes for Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series.[http://www.lincolncenter.org/american-songbook Lincoln Center's American Songbook], Lincoln Center. He has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. In a January 2011 column for Slate, the journalist Timothy Noah called Garner a "highly gifted critic" who had reinvigorated The New York Times{{'}}s literary coverage, and likened him to Anatole Broyard and John Leonard.{{cite web|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/01/i_like_dwight.html |last=Noah |first=Timothy |author-link=Timothy Noah |title=I Like Dwight |website=Slate |date=January 7, 2011 |access-date=December 24, 2013}}

"If you read just one literary critic in the Times, you should read Dwight Garner. But let's say you don't read any books sections, which would sadly put you in the vast majority of the population: You should still read Dwight Garner", Benjamin Errett wrote in Toronto's The National Post.{{cite news|url=https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/the-week-in-wit-let-there-be-dwight-garner-on-the-prickly-sentences-of-a-great-critic |title=The Week in Wit: Let there be Dwight (Garner), on the prickly sentences of a great critic|first=Benjamin |last=Errett|newspaper=The National Post|date=June 6, 2014}} Garner "is an excellent guide to what to read, so much so that he's often all you need to read."

Garner wrote a biweekly column for The New York Times called "American Beauties", which focused on under-sung American books of the past 75 years.[https://www.nytimes.com/column/american-beauties "American Beauties"] in The New York Times. His championing of certain titles—including The Complete Novels of Charles Wright{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/books/the-pleasures-of-a-writer-who-was-richard-pryor-on-paper.html|title=The Pleasures of a Writer Who Was 'Richard Pryor on Paper'|first=Dwight|last=Garner|date=February 23, 2017|website=The New York Times}} and On Fire by Larry Brown{{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/books/larry-brown-on-fire-firefighting-memoir.html|title=On Fire Makes Bad Habits Sound Very Sweet|first=Dwight|last=Garner|date=June 1, 2017|website=The New York Times}}—helped return them to print. For Esquire, Garner played in the 2017 World Backgammon Championship in Monaco.{{Cite web|url=https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a27018394/dwight-garner-backgammon-monte-carlo/|title=How I Won the War Against Regret Playing Backgammon in Monte Carlo|first=Dwight|last=Garner|date=April 3, 2019|website=Esquire}}

Garner was born in Fairmont, West Virginia,{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/travel/15Greenbrier.html |last=Garner |first=Dwight |title=The Greenbrier Resort Hopes to Preserve Its Past |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 12, 2010 |access-date=December 24, 2013}} and grew up in that state and in Naples, Florida. He graduated from Middlebury College, where he majored in American literature.{{cite web|url=http://www.7dvt.com/2008/cooking-books |title=Cooking the Books |last=Podhaizer |first=Suzanne |date=January 9, 2008 |website=Seven Days |access-date=December 24, 2013}} While in college, he wrote book criticism for The Village Voice, music and theater criticism for the Vanguard Press, an alternative weekly of Burlington, Vermont, and was a stringer for The New York Times.

After his graduation from college, Garner was a reporter for The Addison Independent. He then became the arts editor of the Vermont Times, a new alternative weekly in Burlington. He also became a contributing editor to the Boston Phoenix. In the 1990s Garner was a columnist for the Hungry Mind Review. After moving to New York City in 1994, he worked for one year as an associate editor at Harper's Bazaar,{{Cite web|url=https://harpers.org/author/dwightgarner/|title=Dwight Garner | Harper's Magazine|first=Dwight|last=Garner|website=harpers.org}} under the editorship of Liz Tilberis.Mooallem, Stephen (October 13, 2017), [https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a12837800/liz-tilberis/ "The Legend of Liz Tilberis —One of Bazaar's Best"], Bazaar.

Garner lives in New York City with his wife, the writer Cree LeFavour.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/books/review/cooking-extra.html |title=20 More Cookbooks |date=June 1, 2008 |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=December 24, 2013}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/books/review/lights-on-rats-out-memoir-cree-lefavour.html|title=An Odyssey Through Self-Harm and Out the Other Side|first=Daphne|last=Merkin|date=July 24, 2017|newspaper=The New York Times}} They have two children.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/dwight_garner/index.html The New York Times archive of reviews]
• [http://www.qcknightnews.com/2.10350/question-and-answer-dwight-garner-1.1377321 Knight News interview, 2007]

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Category:American literary critics

Category:1965 births

Category:Living people

Category:The New York Times journalists

Category:Middlebury College alumni

Category:Journalists from West Virginia

Category:People from Fairmont, West Virginia

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:American male journalists