GRANT GINDER , born on this date, is an American novelist, academic, and former political aide. He grew up in Laguna Beach, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University. At the latter, Ginder studied under novelists Junot Díaz and Colson Whitehead.
While in college, Ginder worked as an intern in the offices of U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez. Upon completing his education, Ginder served as a speechwriter for John Podesta at the Center for American Progress. In 2009, he published his first novel, This is How it Starts, a story of young government employees and interns working in Washington, D.C. Politico called the novel an examination of Washington’s “power elite”: “sharply observed” and “packed with sly humor.”
In 2013, he published the novel Driver’s Education. In a starred review, the industry publication Booklist called the book, “lively, funny, gritty, and achingly real,” comparing Ginder to novelists Junot Díaz and Michael Chabon. In The Boston Globe, critic Karen Campbell called the work “engaging, colorful, direct, and imaginative,” and “a stirring, memorable trip.” The New Yorker called the work “a sensitively observed story,” about “lessons that bear repeating.” As of 2026, Ginder lives in Brooklyn, and teaches writing at New York University, his alma mater.
Grant Ginder is a Member At Large of the Executive Committee of the SAGE Board of Directors.
Ginder tells a story about coming out to his parents. “When I was 13, I began collecting pictures of hot men that I found on AOL. I kept them on my family’s computer, in a file called ‘downloads’ I thought no one looked at, and I labeled them with the one word I knew how to describe hot men: ‘beefcake.”
Ginder spent six months carefully curating photos of “buff, hairless” guys in red thongs, until one day, while driving in the car, his father turned to him with a important question. Who was downloading all the beefcake pictures?
Ginder froze.
“Looking him straight in the eye, I said, very gravely, ‘Dad, I think it was Mom,’” Ginder recalled. “’Mom?’ he said. ‘Huh. You think I should talk to her?’”
A panicked Ginder told him that wasn’t a good idea.
“No — she’d probably be super embarrassed if you did,” Ginder explained.
Ginder’s dad let it go, and they went back to listening to show tunes.
“He surely knew they were mine. Looking back, he was giving me the space to come out if I wanted to,” Ginder, who teaches writing at New York University, “I just wasn’t ready. I was still working myself out.”
The author of Honestly, We Meant Well, joked that when he officially came out in college, his parents did a terrific job of pretending to be surprised.