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 others. They co-run Pete's Reading Series in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and during the 2020 quarantine hosted The Antibody, an online reading and conversation series. Brian is a founding member and co-director of an artist-owned teaching cooperative called Writing Co-Lab, and curated the 100 Days of Creative Resistance.
Can you tell me about your background?
A cosmic error landed me in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 1980’s. It wasn’t a good fit! My parents were pleased I loved reading and writing and drawing, but in general a little perplexed by me. They grew up poor and we were working class, being creative for a living wasn’t something I was encouraged to consider. I was stubborn though. I became the first in my family to attend college, and worked my way through Oberlin, some semesters putting in almost forty hours at work study in between classes, as well as taking on debt I’m still paying off. Because of that, I decided to study whatever the hell I wanted to study – history, literary theory, film. I moved to Brooklyn after graduation in 1999 and have been here ever since. Even still, it took about ten years before I began to pursue my artistic ambitions with any seriousness. In 2009, I graduated from The New School with an MFA and began to write and create in the margins of being a stay-at-home parent to my son.
What do you enjoy about hosting and curating Pete’s Reading Series?
Being in community and sharing space with other creative people. We toil so much in solitude; readings reconnect me to others and remind me that art is a living, communicative process, and on the stage at Pete’s Candy Store, that relationship is embodied. The authors who put pen to page deliver their art via spoken word, from their mouth to the ears of the listeners in the audience. It’s a profound and ancient human activity. I love being a part of that tradition, creating opportunities for authors and readers to meet, and doing something to contribute to the culture of the city that I love.
There are selfish reasons too. I am typically inspired and motivated after a reading. For me, performance is the essence of art, and hearing things on the stage is illuminating, exciting, and relaxing. I love being read to and have since I was a child.
How did Writing Co-Lab come to be?
From a frustration with what I saw as the exploitative practices of teaching for continuing ed organizations, many of which took over half the student tuition for themselves and offered nothing in the way of professional advancement or pedagogical development, and from a desire to create a more dynamic community between the teachers and students. I’ve been involved in the cooperative movement since Oberlin; co-ops are socialist in nature, and utopian at heart. Our organization gives between eighty and ninety percent of the student tuition directly to the teachers, and we not only run classes but also events on publishing and panels and, every so often, student open mics, as well as retreats like Peitho’s Gift in Crete, and 100 Days of Creative Resistance, which delivered an email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration for the first 100 days of the current regime, from an amazing list of authors, a different one each day.
I was so lucky to find like-minded collaborators in my colleagues Sara Lippmann and Amy Shearn, and I’m proud of what we’ve built, which will be entering its third year come January.
Can you talk about your new book, You Must Go On?
It’s a book I never thought I’d write! Because, honestly, I’m not a big reader of books about writing. But last year I ended up finishing a draft of my graphic memoir and then a draft of a science fiction novel I’ve been revisiting for about ten years now, and while they were in query hell in the fall I taught a class not about how to write but about how to keep at it, 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 way more material than I ever thought I’d write, about twenty short essays in the form of a letter to my students, themed by week on Motivation, Intention, Vision, and Actualization.
I added ten more pieces so that a reader could, if they want, read one a day for a month, like the Artist’s Way, another book I’ve never actually read! It ended up being helpful for me psychologically, a way of returning to and re-rooting into my own creative intentions. So, 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 thing 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.
What do you do when you’re not doing any of the above things?
So much! Currently I’m slashing and magicking my way through Baldur’s Gate 3, though that will probably change once the Switch 2 comes out. I like cooking dinner while sipping a cocktail, then watching something interesting with my family. I take long walks with my lil dog around downtown Brooklyn and Prospect Park, touching grass. I love the city; theater, concerts, bars, dancing. (OMG, have you been to Dance Church? It’s life giving.) I enjoy making things, mostly trouble.
How can readers find you?
In the usual places – Instagram, mostly, at both @bgresko and @writing.colab, though I also pop onto BlueSky and Threads every now and again. Online I’m at www.briangresko.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter I send out a couple of times a year. Google me!