Brian Wask is a Northern Yankee by birth and choice. His identities have varied. He is the author of five fiction books, An Appalachian Tale (1999), Fill of Blue (2001), a short collection of stories (2002), Nitwit (2004) and When the World Was Round (2006). He is also songwriter and co-producer of Punch Cody Presents a Demonstration in Audio (2005). He has lived in New Jersey, West Virginia, Jamaica, Southern Florida, a forty-two foot Ketch, and presently NYC. He wants to move to Italy. He has been shot twelve times… all in the face. He hopes to accomplish greater things in the future. He is currently working on a new book with a lot of words.



Chronology

July 4, 1974- He is born. His parents call him Brian, nothing else. They debated between that and Edgar for six minutes several days earlier at the Moonlight Diner in Bergenfield, NJ. Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn one hundred years earlier.

1975- Brian reads Who’s Got the Apple? to himself.

1976- Brian’s brother Bret is born.

1978- Brian is kicked in the groin for the first time by a neighbor’s older brother and learns the meaning of pain. Later that year he breaks his collarbone when he falls out of a tree while watching his neighbor’s house burn to the ground.

1975- Brian is offered drugs from a big kid holding pills wrapped in a wad of tinfoil. He runs inside and tells his father. They move into a green house in Westwood, NJ.

1980- Brian starts school and climbs the monkey bars and pretends the ground is hot lava like every other kid in America.

1981- “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” changes Brian’s life. He sees it four more times in the theatre and starts to wear a brown leather jacket and a brown fedora to school everyday. His sister Ariana is born.

1982- Brian wrote his first book, “The Snoots Go to Jail”, the first issue of six. Breaks his collarbone again while dancing in socks on a hard wood floor.

1984- Brian writes a Christmas story, “The Watch in the Window”. It’s denied publication in the grammar school paper because it focuses on the homeless and paints the wealthy as greedy and hypocritical.

1986- Brian creates Mad Class with a classmate during fifth grade. They publish several issues until creative rights get between them. He reads a lot of Stephen King.

1990- Brian takes his first creative writing class and is discouraged by his teacher to ever write again. He begins working summers for a construction company and continues every summer through college. He reads Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn.

1992- He barely graduates from high school. The following fall he attends Bergen Community College in NJ, studies sociology. Reads a lot of Hemmingway.

1994- His father frames his acceptance letter to West Virginia University, which he attends in the fall and chooses Anthropology as his major and philosophy as his minor.

1996- A friend in college gives Brian a copy of Fear and Loathing is Las Vegas. He takes a creative writing class. That semester he writes A Full Moon Dance and The Boat Made From Heart. That summer he studies abroad in Jamaica. There he decides he wants to be an anthropologist. He reads a lot of Kerouac.

1997- He graduates from WVU and drives around the country for three months before he settles on the gulf coast of Florida. Before he leaves his mother give him a paperback of Into the Wild. There he decides to apply to anthropology programs at several graduate schools. None, including, NYU, Columbia, and U. of Florida, accept him. He’s disappointed and moves to Jamaica. There he works as a landscaper, illegally.

1999- After returning from Jamaica and several places in between, including South Florida, parent’s house, Hoboken, his niece Tea is born.

2000- He settles on 12th St. and 1st Ave. in the East Village of New York with his good friend John. Brian’s father gets him into the operating engineers union. He works as a construction worker for several years while participating in writing workshops. He completes An Appalachian Tale. He laughs aloud while reading Bukowski’s Ham on Rye.

2001- Brian returns to Jamaica to research his next novel. When he returns to 12th St. he writes Fill of Blue. Reads Dennis Johnson.

2002- He writes short stories, hoping to get something published. Nothing works out so he puts a third of them together and calls it A Short Collection of Stories. He reads Still Life With Woodpecker in Tompkins Square Park. Someone recommends Nicolas Sparks but Brian can’t get through the first chapter. He travels around the country in a ’96 Dodge Stratus with John. Together they periodically publish a web-zine called North Country Ride. John photographs and Brian writes the journal.

2003- Moves into a small studio on 9th St. and Avenue A. He works sixty-five hours a week in Hoboken, with Big Mike, operating an outside hoist on a 20-story building. Has a hard time passing the bars on the way home to New York. Stops a lot and spends most of his money. Can’t remember much from that year. He considers getting into politics like his brother. Reads Larry Brown.

2004- Writes Nitwit, a romance noir. Spends the summer on a 42’ foot Ketch on the east coast of Southern Florida. The plan is to sail the ketch to New York but the boat sinks soon after departure.

2005- Writes and records Punch Cody Presents a Demonstration in Audio. Meets Milinda and falls for her. Damn. They move to Hell’s Kitchen.

2006- Writes When the World Was Round. After finishing he travels to Italy and decides he will live there someday. Reads Raymond Chandler and Russell Banks.

2007- Tea writes My Trip to Georgia. Brian reads A Death in the Family by James Agee, along with 21 other prizewinning novels.
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|Brian and Milinda