Chad Harbach

Early life and education Harbach grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. His father was an accountant and his mother the head of a Montessori school. Harbach graduated from Harvard University, where he befriended fellow writers and journalists Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel. He received an MFA from the University of Virginia in 2004.

n+1 In 2004, Mark Greif, Gessen, Harbach, Kunkel, and Marco Roth launched the literary journal n+1; Harbach had come up with the name as early as 1998. Harbach is both an editor and writer for the journal, contributing essays on environmentalism, David Foster Wallace, and the Boston Red Sox.

The Art of Fielding Harbach worked on his novel The Art of Fielding for nine years. the book was acquired and published by Little, Brown in the fall of 2011. A Vanity Fair e-book describing the writing and publication of the novel was later released. The Art of Fielding was met with extraordinary critical praise. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote, "The Art of Fielding is not only a wonderful baseball novel—it zooms immediately into the pantheon of classics, alongside The Natural by Bernard Malamud and The Southpaw by Mark Harris—but it's also a magical, melancholy story about friendship and coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer."

MFA vs NYC Harbach edited a book about two American writing cultures, released in February 2014. The book was based on Harbach's widely read essay "MFA vs NYC," and featured essays by n+1 contributors such as Elif Batuman and Keith Gessen, as well as the novelist George Saunders. The Times's Dwight Garner described it as a "serious, helpful and wily book."

The Brightness In February 2026, Little Brown announced that it would publish Harbach's second novel, The Brightness, in October 2026. Like The Art of Fielding, the new book will be set at Westish College, a fictional liberal arts school in Wisconsin, as well as in New York City. It will focus on a character who appeared in the first novel, Pella Affenlight, the daughter of the college's former president, and her friend Irma.

Harbach said in a statement that "The Brightness is Pella’s book, and that of her friends and lovers, as she strives both to put down roots and find transcendence. The world she moves through is a multifarious one, encompassing a sleepy college thrust into the culture-war spotlight, a sun-splashed wedding on Block Island, and a New York City of service jobs, glittering parties, and neglected second-wave art." Green claimed Harbach had somehow seen an unpublished version of his manuscript.

In July, 2018, Green's suit was dismissed.