June 25, 2024: My most recent novel, The Last Bird of Paradise, won an International Impact Award in the Contemporary and Historical Fiction categories.
May 3, 2024: The Last Bird of Paradise has won a Maxy Award for Literary Fiction.
May 16, 2023: My novel Oliver’s Travels won a gold medal from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
May 16, 2023: Oliver’s Travels was named a finalist for the Book Excellence Award!
October 10, 2015: I was once again an Emerging Author finalist for the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, but this year I won!
July 15, 2014: I have been named an Emerging Author finalist (one of three) for the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. The winner will be announced at a banquet in Indianapolis on October 25.
What the Zhang Boys Know has won the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction! See the story in the Richmond Times Dispatch. This was a great honor. The other finalists were The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers and The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman.
Reviews
- in Tupelo Quarterly: Review of The Last Bird of Paradise — “The Last Bird of Paradise . . . serves to illuminate gender politics, geopolitical forces, and the results of power imbalance in many forms.”
- in Peace Corps Worldwide: Review of The Last Bird of Paradise — “Clifford Garstang knows how to spin a great yarn–or two. Reading this novel may, among other things, change the way you look at art.”
- in Book Excellence: Review of Oliver’s Travels — “Garstang’s writing is sharp, witty, and skillfully captures the intricacies of relationships.”
- in Tupelo Quarterly: Review of Oliver’s Travels
- in Heavy Feather Review: Review of The Shaman of Turtle Valley — “Garstang’s prose is a pleasure to read.”
- in Peace Corps Worldwide: Review of House of the Ancients and Other Stories — “Clifford Garstang writes with skill and power; these stories create an immediate and often lingering impact.”
- in Los Angeles Review of Books: Review of House of the Ancients and Other Stories
- in Peace Corps Worldwide: Review of The Shaman of Turtle Valley — “Garstang has an imaginative creative talent of weaving various threads of the story together to create a beautiful tapestry.”
- in Pank: Review of What the Zhang Boys Know — “What The Zhang Boys Know is only Garstang’s second full-length publication, but it’s a beautiful, thought-provoking read that further assures a bright future for a talented writer.”
- on AliceOsborn.com: Review of What the Zhang Boys Know — “These stories are not a light walk through life but rather thought-provoking and often life-changing narratives that are both personal and universal. Garstang allows the reader to find their own truth through fictional truth and in doing so, I believe the reader will find a morsel of themselves within each story.”
- in New Madrid: Review of What the Zhang Boys Know — “The writing in What the Zhang Boys Know is crisp, purposeful, and occasionally cinematic.”
- in The Short Review: Review of In an Uncharted Country — “These are wonderful and authentic moments of insight where characters link emotion and geography in an attempt to communicate, to make sense of their experience.”
- in Peace Corps Worldwide: Review of In an Uncharted Country — “If Clifford Garstang’s stories were a city, they wouldn’t be a place you would have heard much about. But if you happened to settle there, you wouldn’t want to leave. . . Garstang’s book looks good and reads better.”
- in Mid-American Review (Volume XXX): Review of In an Uncharted Country — “Read Garstang for his handle on craft, his ability to imply. Read the book because it’s a navigational tool. With clear-eyed precision, it maps the unseen: It draws out how we locate ourselves in a world of knotty relations and turbulent climates.”
Interviews
- Big Blend Radio Author Success Insider 2024: Lisa Smith with Clifford Garstang (video)
- 1455 Author Series 2021: Sean Murphy with Clifford Garstang (video)
- Living the Next Chapter: Interview with Clifford Garstang (podcast)
- Work-in-Progress: Leslie Pietrzyk interviews Clifford Garstang (May 2020)
- Small Press Reviews: Curtis Smith interviews Clifford Garstang (May 2020)
- Lit Hub: Kristina Marie Darling interviews Clifford Garstang (March 2020)
- Indiana Humanities interview with Clifford Garstang (October 2015) (video)
- JMWW: Curtis Smith interviews Clifford Garstang
- Writer’s Bone: Interview with Clifford Garstang (audio)
- David Alan Binder: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- Focus on Fiction: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- Christopher Linforth: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- Anne Leigh Parrish: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- Cameron Conaway interviews Clifford Garstang in The Good Men Project.
- in Eclectica, Vol. 14, No. 3: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- in The Short Review: Interview with Clifford Garstang
- in Fictionaut: Interview with Clifford Garstang