Garret Keizer

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in my work. I’m the author of nine books, including Getting Schooled and Privacy, and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. My essays, poems, and opinion pieces have also appeared in The Antioch Review, Lapham’s Quarterly, the Los Angeles Times, and Mother Jones, among others. I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. My latest book, The World Pushes Back, is also my first book of poetry.

Now Available

The World Pushes Back

About the book:

Winner of the 2018 X J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, The World Pushes Back is a 96-page paperback containing poems written over the past forty years and published in more than thirty journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Hudson Review, Image, and The New Yorker.

To buy it now: IndieBound; Amazon; Texas Review Press; Waterstones

Cover photo by: Jake Mosher. “Winter,” © 2018

Advance Praise

George Santayana wrote, “Spirit chills the flesh and is itself on fire.” If I understand that properly, it could be a way of summing up Garret Keizer’s aesthetic in his marvelous The World Pushes Back.… Keizer is my favorite kind of moralist, assertive yet complicit. He takes us on a journey through mystery from travail toward understanding that leads us back to mystery. The world remains the world; it is he who pushes back.

Stephen Dunn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Read more advance praise

Writings / Interviews

  1. “The Book Banners and I Have One Thing in Common”
    The New York Times (August 2023)
  2. “The Third Force: On Stupidity and Transcendence”
    Harper’s Magazine (September 2021)
  3. “Labor’s Last Stand”
    Harper’s Magazine (September 2018), with thanks to the many people who assisted me.
  4. “Public or Private, It’s Work”
    New York Times (25 June 2011)
  5. “When the Snake Became a Man”
    The New Yorker (30 March 2009)
  6. “Labor’s Schoolhouse”
    Harper’s Magazine (July 2017)
  7. “No Smoke for Camilo”
    Lapham’s Quarterly (Spring 2014)
  8. Interview with Diane Rehm
    WAMU (30 June 2010)
  9. Interview with Stephen Colbert
    The Colbert Report (6 July 2010)
  10. Interview with Violet Lucca
    Harpers.org (6 September 2018)
  11. Interview with June Thomas
    Slate Magazine (30 August 2012)
  12. Interview with Krys Boyd
    KERA (28 August 2018)

Recent News

Talks

Over the years I’ve given a variety of public talks, most of them based on the subject matter of my books. A few examples of past topics and venues appear below. (A fuller list of talks is also available.)

Contact Information

My literary agents are Jim Rutman and Peter Matson at Sterling Lord Literistic:

594 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
(212) 780-6050

Giulia Melucci handles public relations and media appearances for Harper’s Magazine.

If you would like to send me a message or inquire about my availability for speaking engagements, please send an email to garretkeizer [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you.