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Garrard Conley

Biography

Garrard Conley

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 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.

Garrard Conley

Books by Garrard Conley

by Garrard Conley - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Cana, Massachusetts: a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister’s words a love so captivating it transcends language. As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies and judgments that threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves that has no name.

by Garrard Conley - Memoir, Nonfiction

When Garrard Conley was 19 years old, he was outed to his parents and forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, Garrard was supposed to emerge heterosexual and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, he found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.