Brian Gresko's Blog

The Narrative Social Club is a podcast where writers talk about inspiration, process, and craft, created and hosted by Kate Pigott. I’m happy to be featured on Episode 3, “Writing While Parenting,” talking about my work and what I learned about being a father from working with the masterful authors of When I First Held You. I’m in the good company of my friend M.M. DeVoe, founder of Pen Parentis, whose literary salons I curated last year. You can hear her discussing the juggling act that is parenting as a creative person in the second half of the program.

In other big news, Justin Cronin’s essay for the anthology, “My Daughter and God,” was selected for inclusion in the Best American Essays of 2015! A big congratulations to Justin. It was such a pleasure working with him on this piece, and I’m over the moon at the recognition it’s received.

The latest in my “authors in conversation” series for Slice Literary Magazine is out now. Years ago, when my writing career was just beginning, Karen Russell told me how much Katherine Dunn’s novel Geek Love influenced her Pulitzer Prize nominated debut Swamplandia! I had never heard of it, but hold Karen’s work in such high regard I ran right out to track it down. Dunn’s book is a wild tale of carnival freaks told by an albino hunchback dwarf, that shows how “normal” is simply an invention, a social construct enforced by those with charisma and authority. Her crazy vision has infected many authors—I recognized it in Lenore Zion’s Stupid Children, in the latest freak show edition of American Horror Story, and in Porochista Khakpour’s astounding novel The Last Illusion, which also features an albino protagonist and an eccentric cast of misfits. I arranged for Dunn and Khakpour to talk by phone, and the two of them hit it off immediately. Their enlightening conversation covers 90’s alterna-culture, the narrative inventiveness of Moby Dick, as well as tales of boxing and skydiving, and it’s chock full of great writing advice.

For Guernica’s “Boundaries of Gender” issue, I talked to psychology professor Ronald Levant about the shifting nature of masculinity and fatherhood in American culture. Our conversation was revelatory for me, and uplifting. Since the late 70’s, Dr. Levant has been working to help men talk openly about their emotions and be better partners, fathers, and friends. While we have a ways to go toward gender equality in America, he’s seen, especially in the past decade, a lot of progress made, and he articulates very clearly some of the stumbling blocks still ahead of us. What’s more, he helped me see my own writing as part of a continuum of men who have been working since the sexual revolution, to further the goal of gender equality by challenging unhealthy masculine paradigms.

These interviews were both personally very meaningful to me, and I’m very proud of them.

Years ago, inspired in the most literal sense by Chekhov’s story “Misery,” in which a cab-driver finds no one will listen to his sad life’s story and so ends up telling his horse, I penned an animal-themed short fiction about a cat that brings a bird into a man’s apartment. I was studying at the time with James Lasdun, who hammered into his students the importance of leveraging small details – movements, objects, turns of phrase – to open up a character’s inner emotional life, and I was trying to use the bird’s intrusion to discuss the main character’s relationship to his masculinity. The story went through many iterations, and grow significantly from that seed. It’s called “The Width of Instinct,” and I’m really happy to have it on Volume 1 Brooklyn.

In other literary news, just when I thought I was done with literary series, I got pulled back in… I’ll be taking over as co-curator and co-host of Pete’s Reading Series, which takes place every other Thursday at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. Pete’s is one of my favorite spots to see authors, and is home to the best little stage in New York City. If you’re in town, please come by some time and say hi!

Two pieces posted this week that harken back to my time at Oberlin College. Both address sexuality, gender, and inequality.

The first, a review of Gina Arnold’s excellent 33 1/3 book on Liz Phair’s seminal album Exile in Guyville, went up on The Rumpus. Phair is one of Oberlin’s most famous alum, and I’ve been a fan of her work since encountering it on my first bus ride to the college, as a prospective student.

“[Phair] utilized the indie rock idiom to tell a distinctly female story, one that did not conform to indie rock’s unspoken rules—a story that, in fact, called attention to the inequality and misogyny underlying those rules. Her characters gave voice to those smart, ambitious, and talented young women of indie rock frustrated because they did not have as much respect, sexual license, accolades, and audience as their male counterparts.”

The second, on Babble, recounts a painful story of a friend who was raped. It raises troubling, difficult to answer questions about what to do when you know a sexual assault has occurred, but the victim doesn’t want to step forward and speak about it. This is something I’ve never written about before, though I think of it often.

“How could I have slept in the same room as a rapist, talked with him for hours and hours, and not spotted that? What was wrong with me that Ed’s behavior wouldn’t raise any alarm bells?”

In other news, Tuesday night was my last time on stage co-hosting the Pen Parentis Literary Salon. It’s been a great experience curating the series for the past year and a half, but I’m moving on so I have more time to work on my novel-in-progress.

For those of you familiar with my work on Babble, you may know of my son’s struggles with socializing, especially in a school setting. I’ve written about how, in pre-school, he underwent a psychological evaluation that led to him receiving an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and special services to help curb his anxiety and impulse control issues. These helped, but he’s been struggling again since the start of kindergarten, and I’m finding that as he gets older the social stigma of his behavior has become greater. This has made for a few isolating and fraught weeks, as the simple question of “How is he doing in kindergarten?” is often something I really don’t want to talk about. I wrote an essay about this situation called “Please Don’t Ask How My Son Is Doing,” which was published today on DAME Magazine. DAME is a fantastic site that features smart writing about feminism and culture, and I’m honored to have my voice added to the conversation there.

On Monday, my debut short story posted on Joyland Magazine. “The Open Palm of Desire” is a playful story about a dad in the midst of a divorce whose son digs up a severed hand in the sandbox. Despite that somewhat dark premise, it’s humorous and sweet at heart. Below you’ll find video of me reading the story at last June’s Sunday Salon. The beginning has changed a bit since then, but it gives you a sense of the tone.

You can read the full story here.

Also on Monday, my review of Simon Critchley’s Bowie went up on The Rumpus. This one was a lot of fun to write, and a wonderful excuse to lose myself in David Bowie’s albums for a couple of weeks.

“In Bowie, Critchley does for the artist what Bowie does for the realities of modern life: he observes closely and with sensitivity, revealing the omnipresent underlying tension in the material at hand, the light in the darkness and the darkness in the light. “There is no final reconciliation and no final peace,” Critchley writes about life, though he could also be describing Bowie’s best work.”

You can read the full review here.

September finds my son starting kindergarten, which means that, though I’m still his primary caregiver, I’m no longer spending the majority of my time with him. This frees up my schedule for writing, and to kick that off I’ll be heading to the Ozarks for a two week stay at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I’m the recipient of a 2014 “My Time” writing fellowship for writers who are parents. My thanks to the Sustainable Arts Foundation for the grant that made the fellowship possible. I can’t wait to have two solid weeks to focus just on my fiction work in what looks like an idyllic setting.

In other fiction news, if you’re in the New York area, you can find me at two readings this Fall:

On September 30th I’m reading at the Lyrics, Lit, and Liquor series at the Parkside Lounge.

A month later, on October 29th I’ll be on the lineup at the Buzzard’s Banquet, which takes place at one of my favorite haunts, Soda Bar.

If you’re in the area, please come out and I’ll tell you a tale.

Father’s Day came with a flurry of interest in When I First Held You, and for a couple of weeks life was a whirlwind! You can find updated links in the Praise page under Fatherhood Anthology, and check out my new Press page to catch up on interviews – including one on The Atlantic – and an article on modern fatherhood on CNN that featured me.

I was very proud to see my essay I Told My Biological Father Goodbye – And It Made All the Difference at the top of Salon’s homepage over Father’s Day weekend. I started this essay years ago, while studying at The New School, and it passed through many iterations – some shorter, some longer – before finally taking this form. It’s probably the last I’ll say on the subject for a while, and that always feels good: writing about something to the point you feel like you’ve written it out of your system.

Also around Father’s Day my essay How Being a Stay-at-Home Dad Made My Embrace My Inner Feminist posted on Bustle. The piece was picked up by The Huffington Post and led to an appearance on The HuffPost Live. The piece was widely shared after Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls posted it to their Facebook page. I was very pleased, and, honestly, a bit surprised it resonated with so many readers. My thoughts on gender equality and feminism never struck me as being that newsworthy; they just are what they are. Hopefully in a few years the flurry of interest in that piece will seem dated, as it won’t be unusual for a father, or any man, to call himself a feminist.

Two recent reviews of When I First Held You left me beaming.

First, Shelf Awareness says: “It’s a collection of luminous essays by men on parenthood that are easily read and terrifically illuminating. … Readers will laugh, or perhaps wipe a tear; parents will nod knowingly.”

Also, Lorne Jaffe wrote a lovely, heartfelt response to the book on his blog Raising Sienna. “What a wonderful compendium of darkness and light, sadness and jubilation, and all around gorgeous writing is When I First Held You. Delve into these stories. Soak them in. Learn from them. Feel them. Because as a father, they represent you. They might not exactly mirror your personal tale, but the reflection is true and real and gorgeous.”

I’m grateful for these! And to the many readers who have contacted me to share how moved they were by the beautiful, honest essays in the anthology. Thanks.

WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show is about as New York as a bagel wit a schmear, and I often have him in mind when I’m interviewing authors. It was a lot of fun to be on his show yesterday to talk about fatherhood and raising kids, along with When I First Held You contributors Lev Grossman and Matthew Specktor. You can listen to our segment here.