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Garrard Conley is the author of the memoir Boy Erased, as well as the creator and co-producer of the podcast UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America. His work has been published by the New York Times, Oxford American, Time, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Conley is a graduate of Brooklyn College's MFA program, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow specializing in fiction. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University. His debut novel, All the World Beside (Riverhead, March 26, 2024), is the story of two men in love and caught between the demands of their families and societal pressures in 18th-century Puritan New England.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Queer Scarlet Letter with over 500 sources for research.
On your nightstand now:
An ARC of Exhibit by R.O. Kwon, whose sharp language is a joy, along with Miranda July's new novel, All Fours, which had me reeling from joy and laughter to extreme existential crisis. I'm also reading and very much enjoying The Charioteer by Mary Renault, which somehow kept off my radar until this year--it's the gay war novel I didn't know I needed.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Any of the Fear Street books by R.L. Stine. I read these way too early and they've always held a fascination for me. Campy fun.
Your top five authors:
George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Kazuo Ishiguro. This is way too hard. Maybe top 20 authors would make more sense, because I can't rank these geniuses.
Book you've faked reading:
War and Peace, though never Anna Karenina, which I've read more than once.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I think the novel is remarkable for its prose style, its moral power, and for the fact that this man somehow knew how to write about adultery from a woman's perspective despite being a bit of a conservative. The book is a marvel.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Recently, Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. A stunning red cover I immediately knew would go well with the blues I use in my living room. I was right.
Book you hid from your parents:
I never had to hide my books, because no one in my small Arkansan town took an interest in books. However, I did often thumb through Edmund White's books in Barnes & Noble, and I was certainly careful to carry any gay books from the gay section to another section to read.
Book that changed your life:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I read it right after graduating college, and it made me realize how insane it was that very few of my literature classes taught any books that weren't American or British.
Favorite line from a book:
"The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy." From Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. I used it as the epigraph for my new novel.
Five books you'll never part with:
Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter, of course, but also any collected Shakespeare, the Library of America collected works of Flannery O'Connor, and Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Fathers & Sons by Turgenev. I loved the world of that book. It's one of those rare perfect books.