New York Times bestselling memoirist turned novelist, Garrard Conley, spoke with me about going from activist to fictionist, the isolation of being an artist, and his debut novel All the World Beside.
Garrard Conley is the New York Times bestselling 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 memoir became a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton.
His debut novel is titled All the World Beside and described as “... an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England.”
Tess Gunty, National Book Award-winning author of Rabbit Hutch, called the book an “... accomplishment of breathtaking prose, expert pacing, and extraordinary psychological intelligence...” Garth Greenwell wrote, “... this novel contains some of the finest writing I've encountered in recent American fiction.”
Garrard’s 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, and he is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University.
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In this file Garrard Conley and I discussed:
What it was like to work with Radiolab on a podcast
Setting out to write “The Queer Scarlett Letter”
His intense historical research process 
How he inhabits his stories
Why writers can’t skimp on what the audience wants
How to un-Tik-Tok-ify your brain
And a lot more!
Show Notes:
garrardconley.com
All the World Beside: A NOVEL By Garrard Conley (Amazon)
Garrard Conley Amazon Author Page
Garrard Conley on Instagram
Garrard Conley on Twitter
Kelton Reid on Twitter
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