George Garrett has had a varied literary career, publishing in almost every genre. In 2001, he published the non-fiction book Going to See the Elephant: Pieces of a Writing Life and in 1998, Bad Man Blues: A Portable George Garrett. His most recent novel is The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You (1996). He is best known, however, for his trilogy of historical novels, Death of the Fox (1971), The Succession: A Novel of Elizabeth and James (1983), and Entered from the Sun (1990). His latest short story collection is An Evening Performance: New and Selected Stories (1985). Garrett has also published several collections of poetry and plays, has written screenplays, and has edited a number of books, most recently, The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems, 1964-1999.

Garrett received his PhD from Princeton and holds an honorary degree from the University of the South. He has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Sabbatical Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Grant, and the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the T.S. Eliot Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and the Commonwealth of Virginia Governor's Award for the Arts. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Bennington College, Princeton University, Hollins College, was the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, and is a Cultural Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  

Note: Empty Bed Blues is appearing concurrently in the May 2002 issue of 64.