Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of eight works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a Today show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.  He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Greer has written for several magazines including Esquire, Paris Review, and New Yorker. His first book was a collection of stories titled How It Was for Me. The New York Times Book Review praised it, commenting that "Greer's descriptive talents are immense.”

One year later Greer achieved acclaim for his first novel, The Path of Minor Planets. The San Francisco Chronicle listed the book as one of the five most important literary events of the year. But it was his second novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, that drew national attention when it was published in 2004. In the New Yorker, John Updike wrote of the novel as "enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov." It was a Today show book club pick and won two prestigious awards: the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award for an author under 35. 

Greer's novel,  The Story of a Marriage was a Washington Post Book of the Year.The New York Times said of it: "Mr. Greer seamlessly choreographs an intricate narrative that speaks authentically to the longings and desires of his characters."  His next book The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells was called “Philosophically intriguing as well as gorgeously imagined and executed" by Booklist.

Greer’s novel Less, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction being praised as "A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love."  It won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, was one of the Washington Post's 10 best books of 2017, and it made best book lists as well in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, and Paris Review. A musical based on Less is being written by Jason Robert Brown and Doug Wright.

His follow up to Less, is the bestselling Less is Lost (Little Brown, September 20, 2022). The Star Tribune called it "wildly entertaining," and NPR said "Less is Lost, is as funny and poignant as its predecessor."

Greer's new book, Villa Coco (Doubleday, June 9, 2026), is an international bestseller on both the New York Times and Sunday Times lists. Library Journal said "Greer’s novel is a heartfelt and poignant tribute to the mysterious process of growing up. Highly recommended for all fiction collections." in their star review.

In addition to his novels his other writings include being guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2022 and his most recent project, a kindle essay and audiobook titled My Mother and Other Wild Animals about a raucous and loving road trip he took with his mother. He also has a story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024.

Greer was the first Executive Director of the Santa Maddalena Foundation, working alongside President Beatrice Monti della Corte to invite writers from around the world for six weeks of tranquility in the Tuscan countryside in which to pursue their craft.  Writers such as Zadie Smith, Michael Cunningham, Colm Tóibín, Maylis de Kerangal, Dany Laferriere, Juan Gabriel Vasquez and numerous others have found the Foundation an ideal place for their work. In 2018 Greer left the Foundation to focus on his writing but keeps a strong connection to its mission.

Greer lives in San Francisco and Venice.

Andrew Sean Greer's website

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