Brian Gresko (they/he) is a writer, illustrator, literary journalist, and educator based in Brooklyn. They identify as white, genderqueer, and polyamorous. Their work has appeared on Slate, Longreads, The Literary Hub, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, the L.A. Review of Books, and in The Sun Magazine and Poets & Writers Magazine, among numerous other publications. In 2014, Gresko edited the anthology When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood (Penguin). More recently, Brian self-published the book You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity. They co-run the esteemed Pete's Reading Series in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and during the 2020 quarantine hosted The Antibody, an online reading and conversation series. Currently, they are curating 100 Days of Creative Resistance for Writing Co-Lab, an artist-owned teaching cooperative of which Brian is a founding member and co-director. Brian received an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and graduated from Oberlin College as a first-generation college student with a self-designed, cross-disciplinary major entitled "Narrativity in Film." @bgresko
Where were you born and raised? How did it influence your voice and perspective? My parents grew up working class in Philadelphia and raised me the same in the suburbs just outside the city. They admired my creativity, but didn’t encourage me to pursue writing or art making with any seriousness. On the contrary, they told me to get my head out of the books and learn a trade, or, when younger, play sports. You know, “normal” pursuits, especially for a boy. I refused. I attended Catholic school till ninth grade, an oppressive environment where I was picked on by students and teachers alike for my nonconformist attitudes and genderqueer weirdness. I never fit in, and in my family, that was literal – around the age of eight or nine my parents revealed that my dad wasn’t my biological dad, though we didn’t talk about it after that, and for more than ten years I carried on pretending I was my dad’s son. Pretending to be what I was not was one way I learned how to survive.
All of this led to a distrust of authority in general, an attitude I found reflected in the literature and art I loved. In many ways, the world of books, comics, music, movies, and video games provided more of a home to me than the embodied house where I lived. Art has always played a powerful, central role in my life.
My upbringing also meant I had to foster a certain amount of stubbornness, of resistance, and a hell of a lot of self-love too, to keep pursuing my passions. That’s persisted into adulthood, for better and for worse. I like to go my own way, and I am wary of gatekeepers in general. That’s not to say I’m solitary – I have nurtured many close relationships with like-minded writers and creative folk here in Brooklyn, people who get me, and I can be myself around. Community is important to me, because I often felt isolated as a child.
Also, because I came up around people who weren’t college educated, and who didn’t hold art and literature in exalted esteem, I have a very open minded aesthetic. I love pop and genre and literary books alike, I don’t see much distinction between so-called high and low culture, it’s all just culture and I eat it with gusto, the same way I house a bag of potato chips when stoned or savor a half dozen oysters over an ice cold gin martini. I want and love it all. And I strive for a voice on the page that is like the one I speak with, not academic and cold, but warm and playful and irreverent, vibrant.
What were your early reading habits like, and do any childhood books still linger in your imagination? My parents weren’t big readers, which freed me to curate my reading without any adult supervision. My earliest loves were genre, and often strange. The horror novels of John Bellairs, where nerdy kids on the edge of middle school society battled selfish adults who had made hellish bargains with demons. Or the fantasy novels of Piers Anthony, where every character (even the dorks) had a magical talent, books intended for adults but which I started reading in elementary school. As a child of the 80’s I of course had my Choose Your Adventure period too! I even formed a writing club with my friends to pen our own. But I think my first love was The Monster At The End of This Book, where lovable, furry Grover from Sesame Street tries to stop you from turning pages, and of course he can’t, only to reveal (spoiler alert!) that the monster at the end of the book is none other than him, the one who’s been there the whole time. That a book could play with the reader like that, and make you so aware of its form, lit up my early brain. I’ve been, for as long as I can remember, interested in story form and structure, and I think Grover might be the one who planted that seed.
Describe your typical writing day. There isn’t one – which I’m happy about, as I’d get bored if there was! Besides creative writing, I co-run Writing Co-Lab, a teaching cooperative that provides online craft classes and workshops. I also co-run Pete’s Reading Series, Brooklyn’s longest running literary venue. In addition to creative writing, I teach, write literary journalism, and work with clients, and even though my son is now sixteen, I’m still the primary caregiver at home, so if he’s sick or has the day off (NYC public schools have so many holidays) then I prioritize spending time with him, at least for a good part of the day. And of course there are groceries to buy, dinners to make, a dog to walk, and all the other domestic stuff anyone with a family handles. I know writers who bristle at the tasks that take them from the page, but I can’t write all day even if I wanted to, my creative spirit is too promiscuous, my energy restless. Those disparate parts of myself feed my writing.
Also, in general, nights are a no-go for me when it comes to work. Nights are for my family, or dates with my spouse, or outings with friends, they’re for having fun and restoring my energy. Sometimes I teach classes, but I never write at night. That’s a time for me to refill my well. I think this is important to mention because capitalism tells us we have to always be working, producing, justifying our existence with a paycheck, but I don’t buy it. As an artist, I align myself against that dehumanizing ideology. I want to live life fully and deliciously. The other day I saw a quote from a famous author advising writers to clear their schedule of everything that isn’t writing, but not only does that require an incredible amount of economic privilege, it also sounds to me like their ambition is cutting them off from emotional connection and physical wellness. Honestly, it’s almost sociopathic, the idea that writing should take priority over everything else! I’m far more than just what I’ve written, and my active, full, and varied days reflect that.
Of course, I love creative writing too, so I do generally find an hour or two for myself on many mornings to scribble. My progress is slow, incremental, which is perhaps why I don’t have a lot of books under my belt, or at least part of the reason. But that’s okay.
Tell us about how You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity came about. Serendipity. Last year I finished a draft of a graphic memoir and then a draft of a science fiction novel, and while they were in query hell I taught a class about how to keep writing, especially when our entire culture seems bent on telling us to shut the hell up – even within the publishing industry it can feel that way. The class was asynchronous, over email with occasional zooms, and at the end of the month, I discovered I had twenty short essays composed in the form of letters to my students.
That epistle format was essential to the project; in the guise of writing directly to writers seeking inspiration, I ended up talking to myself, telling myself the things I needed to hear to keep at it, and reminding myself of all the ways I’ve learned to persist over the past fifteen years of writing professionally. I was surprised because I’m not a person who reads a lot of books about writing, but I loved this project. I added ten more pieces so that a reader could, if they want, read one a day for a month, and ended up with a short book’s worth of essays.
In keeping with the ethos of the project, I decided not to seek anyone’s permission to publish it, because for an artist that’s what the publishing system is, really, it’s a system in which you have to constantly ask permission from publishing entities to put your work out. I was like, fuck that, I will simply put it out and sell it myself, old school style, the way I used to buy zines and vinyl bootlegs back in the 90’s. I designed the whole book myself and worked with Radix Media, a printing and publishing cooperative near me here in Prospect Heights, and there you have it. You can order a copy online, I’ve shipped them all over the country.
Do you keep a journal or notebook? If so, what’s in it? I keep a journal that is very personal. Typically the writing in there isn’t even in sentences, it’s lists or observations or drawings, stray thoughts and feelings, fragments of dreams. Sometimes creative breakthroughs will come from those jottings, but at heart that journal is just for me, a space for the rawest of material without a concern for publication.
I have a more formal journal full of to-do lists, meeting notes, and teaching material, and in the back of that I sometimes write creatively in long hand. The thing is, I started writing on a typewriter and a word processor, so my creative output has always been linked to typing. Plus I find that my childish handwriting makes everything look a little bit silly! So I only write long hand as a strategy to break myself out of a rut, or get a new perspective, or shift something in myself.
What’s become the most helpful journal space for me as a creative journal is my notes app. I rely on my subconscious a lot – I’ll consider a question or problem I’m having before bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night I’ll wake up with some solution that feels so intuitive it’s like it’s been there the whole time and I just didn’t see it. In those moments, and also when on the subway, or taking a walk, or even waiting in line at the grocery store, I’ll use the notes app on my phone to capture my thoughts. That’s become an incredible living repository for working ideas out.
Are there any authors, contemporary or historic, that you’d dream of having as a dinner guest? Because I’m an active member of the literary community here in New York City, I am fortunate to personally know many writers whose work I love and admire, so I’m going to go with the magical part of this question and resurrect James Baldwin, maybe not for dinner, but for cocktails and french fries. I’d love to know what he thinks of how technology has changed since his death, and commiserate over the creep of American authoritarianism and white supremacy, which I don’t think he’d be surprised to see, sadly.
Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines? Yes. I’m passionate about music, movies, theater, visual art, dance – all of it! One of the upsides of living in New York City is having access to art that can be experienced in community, often for very cheap. Recently, I saw a trio of Balanchine ballets at the New York City Ballet (I had never seen live ballet before) and a free Moliere play in Prospect Park. Just this past weekend, I attended Dance Church, which is like a jazzercise class smashed into pilates and yoga but in a dance club environment, and saw Ryan Coogler’s incredible movie Sinners at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Each of these sparked thoughts about the body, rhythm, and humor that have or will work their way into the sentencing and structure of my latest memoir draft.
This is one of the reasons I love live literary events so much. Being alone with a book is a beautiful thing, but in performance and in an audience with others I find myself opening to aspects of the written work I didn’t notice before, or feel. Coming together, whether at a play, or in a movie theater, or around a fire, to witness art and narrative is an ancient thing that predates the technology of books and even written language. I find it deeply moving and inspiring.
AI and technology are changing the ways we write and receive stories. How has your view of writing changed with the rise of AI? And why is it important that humans remain at the center of the creative process? So many have said much smarter things about the despicable creep of AI, as every corporation suddenly feels compelled to put money and resources into shoving it into every damn thing, even when it makes no sense and adds no value to our experience. I will also save you from my dystopian conspiracy theories about how, by the time we as a society realize how closely we’re being surveilled by our technology and controlled by algorithms, and how this makes it a hell of a lot easier for fascists to consolidate their authority, it will be too late to turn it all off. Instead, I’ll just say that for me, as pleasurable as it is to see a piece come to completion, the real joy comes in the process of making it, of laboring to get my wording just right, of attuning to my sentence rhythm, of surprising myself by listening to my sub and unconscious mind, and of the emotional clarity that comes with closely investigating and questioning and challenging my own beliefs, biases, sense of truth. These things build compassion for the self and for others, and they are, I believe, basic elements of our humanity, they’re why art exists and persists though the capitalists among us see no purpose to it other than entertainment. All of that good, juicy, exciting personal development and critical thinking is lost when you outsource creation to a machine. And it’s sad to see that so many people don’t understand that, or value the creative process, as challenging as it is – or maybe they don’t value the process precisely because it’s so challenging and uncomfortable, so impossible to monetize. Learning to sit deeply with discomfort and uncertainty, and committing to decisions that, eventually, bring you beyond those negative sensations is such an essential part of being an artist, but it’s also so freakin’ hard. No, instead of doing that, many would rather plug in, get an easy answer from a robot, and not have to think too hard about themselves or this world that we live in. It’s as depressing as it is ridiculous.
Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time. Some of my favorite writers of all time recently had books out that I loved – like Karen Russell’s The Antidote, which is a lush American tapestry that, through a magical premise, ends up telling deep and unsettling truths about the history of white colonial expansion West which our country would rather forget and ignore. Also there’s Melissa Febos, who's memoir The Dry Season, about how she took a year off from sex and relationships in order to find out what she really wants and loves in life, was revelatory, at the sentence level (Febos is a poet in the guise of a memoirist) and because of her insights into desire and self-actualization, which is another thing we’re not encouraged to examine closely in a culture that would prefer we simply consume and conform. I also recently loved Carvell Wallace’s Another Word for Love, which is a book of gorgeous and profound meditations on life, gender, race, and, of course, love.
As for other writers I adore? There are so many – the aforementioned Baldwin, as well as Kurt Vonegut, and Margaret Atwood. To see a list of contemporary writers I love, check out the 100 Days of Creative Resistance project I curated for Writing Co-Lab. It features a hundred contemporary authors who penned a letter of opposition, encouragement, and commiseration for each of the first hundred days of this current regime, starting with R. O. Kwon and ending with T Kira Madden. It’s an anthology of rage and grief and hope and love and I’m so grateful for all the geniuses who gifted us with these amazing letters.
Exploring literature, the arts, and the creative process connects me to… the many parts of myself that I don’t always pay close attention to or allow to speak or even realize were hidden inside of me, my history both personally and culturally, the diverse communities to which I belong, and the world around me. I feel my greatest sense of aliveness when I am making something. Being creative is love, it’s vitality, it’s pure joy.
