Brian McGuigan

Brian McGuigan’s nonfiction has appeared in Gawker, Salon, The Rumpus,The Weeklings, and elsewhere, and he writes a monthly column on fatherhood for ParentMap Magazine called “Daddy Issues.” He’s the author of the poetry chapbook “More Than I Left Behind” (Spankstra Press, 2006), and has written and performed monologues about his dramatic weight loss called “Fat Fuck” at Bumbershoot, Annex Theater, and other venues. Brian has received grant support from 4Culture (2011) and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (2011 & 2014) and was a fellow in the Jack Straw Writers’ Program (2008). In 2010, he was shortlisted for The Stranger’s Genius Award in Literature, and in 2011, he was selected as one of City Arts Magazine’s Power 50 Culture Makers. When he’s not writing and parenting, Brian co-curates the popular reading series Cheap Wine & Poetry and Cheap Beer & Prose and is on the programming committee for Seattle Lit Crawl. Currently, he’s at work on a memoir about fatherhood, masculinity, and violence.

As a stay-at-home dad, the one-month 2014 Centrum Residency will provide a prolonged chunk of time so Brian can focus on his memoir titled DEAR FATHER. His project is about fatherlessness, manhood, and parenting. Like many boys raised without a dad, he grew up believing the only way to prove his manhood was through violence, crime, and closing himself off emotionally. With the birth of his son he understood the true cost of his upbringing–and how he didn’t want to raise his boy to think being a real man meant how hard you could punch someone.