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Dwight Garner

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Dwight Garner
Born (1965-01-08) January 8, 1965 (age 61) [citation needed]
Fairmont, West Virginia, U.S.
Occupation
  • Writer
  • journalist
Alma materMiddlebury College
Subject

Dwight Garner (born January 8, 1965) is an American journalist and longtime writer and editor for The New York Times. In 2008, he was named a book critic for the newspaper.

He is the author of Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany[1] and Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements.[2] In 2023 he published his memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.[3] The book's title refers to the work of the literary critic Seymour Krim, who called his memory "that profuse upstairs delicatessen of mine."[4]

Early life and education

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Garner was born in Fairmont, West Virginia,[5] where he grew up until relocating Naples, Florida.[6] He graduated from Middlebury College,[7] where he majored in American literature.[citation needed] While in college, he wrote book criticism for The Village Voice, and was a stringer for The New York Times and the alternative Burlington weekly Vanguard Press.[8]

Career

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After his graduation from college, Garner was a reporter for The Addison Independent.[citation needed] He then became the arts editor of the Vermont Times.[9][10] He also became a contributing editor to the Boston Phoenix.[11] 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, under the editorship of Liz Tilberis.[citation needed]

Before becoming a book critic for The New York Times in 2008, he was senior editor of The New York Times Book Review for ten years.[12][13][14] He was the founding books editor of Salon.com,[11] where he worked from 1995 to 1998.[15] His monthly column in Esquire magazine was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2017.[16][17]

His essays and journalism have appeared in Harper's Magazine,[14] The Times Literary Supplement,[18] the Oxford American,[19] Slate,[20] The Village Voice,[21] the Boston Phoenix,[11] The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.[22] For several years he wrote the program notes for Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series.[citation needed] He has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.[citation needed] In a January 2011 column for Slate, journalist Timothy Noah called Garner a "highly gifted critic" who reinvigorated The New York Times's literary coverage, likening him to Anatole Broyard and John Leonard.[23]

Garner wrote a biweekly column for The New York Times called "American Beauties," which focused on underappreciated American books of the past seventy-five years.[24] His championing of certain titles—including The Complete Novels of Charles Wright[25] and On Fire by Larry Brown[26]—helped return them to print.[citation needed] For Esquire, Garner played in the 2017 World Backgammon Championship in Monaco.[27]

He is a member of New York City's Organ Meat Society, co-founded by Eater food critic Robert Sietsema.[28][29] In 2023, Garner's Grub Street Diet, for New York magazine, was one of their most popular pieces of the year.[30] His 2012 New York Times essay in praise of the peanut butter and pickle sandwich, which he called "a thrifty and unacknowledged American classic,"[31] went viral internationally.[32] Christina Cauterucci wrote in Slate that Garner "changed my life, intimately and permanently, with an ode to an object I'd never previously considered with the solemnity it deserves: the peanut butter and pickle sandwich."[33] New York Times Cooking has since published the recipe.[34]

In 2023 he published his memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.[3][35][36]

Personal life

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Garner lives in New York City with his wife, writer Cree LeFavour.[37][38] They have two children.[39]

References

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  1. ↑ "Garner's Quotations". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  2. ↑ "Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements". Amazon. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  3. 1 2 "The Upstairs Delicatessen". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  4. ↑ Carbone, Jessica (Spring 2024). "Review: The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, and Eating while Reading, by Dwight Garner". Gastronomica. 24 (1): 79–80. doi:10.1525/gfc.2024.24.1.79. ISSN 1529-3262.
  5. ↑ Garner, Dwight (August 12, 2010). "The Greenbrier Resort Hopes to Preserve Its Past". The New York Times. Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  6. ↑ "'The Upstairs Delicatessen' tells of Dwight Garner's lifelong love of reading and eating". KUAF 91.3. November 13, 2023. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  7. ↑ Podhaizer, Suzanne (January 9, 2008). "Cooking the Books". Seven Days. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  8. ↑ Routly, Paula (May 20, 2026). "Seven Days Still Publishes Literary Criticism". Seven Days. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  9. ↑ Garner, Dwight (November 1, 2020). "Dwight Garner Shares From His Stash of Other Writers' Words". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  10. ↑ Garner, Dwight (August 4, 2016). "The Secret to the Success of Seven Days Newspaper". Seven Days. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  11. 1 2 3 Wolf, David (October 15, 2013). "Critical thinking #3: Dwight Garner". Prospect.
  12. ↑ Neyfakh, Leon (October 13, 2008). "Longtime Times Book Review Senior Editor Dwight Garner to Join Kakutani and Maslin in Daily Paper". Observer. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  13. ↑ "Dwight Garner - The New York Times". www.nytimes.com. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  14. 1 2 Ennis, Stacy. "New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on writing, reading, and eating | Episode 167". Beyond Better (Podcast).
  15. ↑ O'Reilly, Brendan J. (October 22, 2013). "Times Literary Critic Dwight Garner to Speak at Stony Brook Southampton". Dan’s Papers. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  16. ↑ Bloomgarden-Smoke, Kara (January 19, 2017). "American Society of Magazine Editors Announces Finalists for 2017 Awards". WWD. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  17. ↑ "ELLIES 2017 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED". ASME. January 19, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  18. ↑ "Dwight Garner Archives". TLS. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  19. ↑ "Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements". Amazon. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  20. ↑ "Dwight Garner". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  21. ↑ Taeckens, Michael (January 15, 2015). "Reviewers & Critics: Dwight Garner of the New York Times". Poets & Writers. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  22. ↑ "Dwight Garner's Profile". Muck Rack. June 30, 2026. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  23. ↑ Noah, Timothy (January 7, 2011). "I Like Dwight". Slate. Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  24. ↑ "American Beauties". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  25. ↑ Garner, Dwight (February 23, 2017). "The Pleasures of a Writer Who Was 'Richard Pryor on Paper'". The New York Times.
  26. ↑ Garner, Dwight (June 1, 2017). "On Fire Makes Bad Habits Sound Very Sweet". The New York Times.
  27. ↑ Garner, Dwight (April 3, 2019). "How I Won the War Against Regret Playing Backgammon in Monte Carlo". Esquire.
  28. ↑ Sietsema, Robert (March 19, 2025). "Sheep Spines and Pork Kidneys at Long Island City's Newest Chinese Restaurant". Robert Sietsema's New York. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  29. ↑ Sytsma, Alan (September 29, 2023). "Dwight Garner Always Has a Muffuletta in the Freezer". Grub Street. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  30. ↑ "Grub Street's 20 Most-Read Stories of 2023". Grub Street. December 26, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  31. ↑ Garner, Dwight (October 22, 2012). "Peanut Butter Takes On an Unlikely Best Friend". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  32. ↑ Fulton, Wil (April 9, 2018). "We Tried the Controversial Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich, and It's Shockingly Good". Thrillist. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  33. ↑ Cauterucci, Christina (April 24, 2018). "A Paean to PB&P". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  34. ↑ Garner, Dwight. "Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich Recipe". NYT Cooking. Retrieved February 21, 2026.
  35. ↑ Schwartz, Alexandra (November 12, 2023). "For a Hungry Book Critic, Every Word Is a Feast". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  36. ↑ "'The Upstairs Delicatessen' tells of Dwight Garner's lifelong love of reading and eating". wbur. November 13, 2023. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
  37. ↑ "20 More Cookbooks". The New York Times. June 1, 2008. Retrieved December 24, 2013.
  38. ↑ Merkin, Daphne (July 24, 2017). "An Odyssey Through Self-Harm and Out the Other Side". The New York Times.
  39. ↑ Begley, Adam (November 3, 2023). "A New York critic's gluttony for books and food". TLS. Retrieved July 4, 2026.
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