George Garrett had a varied literary career, published in almost every genre. His publication Southern Excursions, a book of essays, was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2003.

Garrett was 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 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.