Bryan Washington describes himself as a writer from Houston, but it might be more accurate to say he’s a writer of Houston. His work not only observes the city, it seems to create it anew. According to Washington, "There’s an unknowability to Houston because of the sprawl and the diversity, and there’s a chaos, too, but one that’s warm. The multiplicity of experiences you can have here makes Harris County crazy-good fodder for anyone looking to write about it."

Born in Kentucky in 1993, Bryan Washington has lived in Houston since his family moved to the city in the mid-1990s. He knew he was gay at a young age but did not formally come out, fearing stigmatization. He graduated from the University of Houston with a BA in English, and continued his education at the University of New Orleans where he earned an MFA. He is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Rice University.

He started his writing career publishing non-fiction and essays. His book of collected stories, Lot, was published in 2019, and Memorial: A Novel, followed in 2020. He is currently working with A24 on an adaptation of this novel for television. His new novel, Family Meal, is expected in October 2023. His stories and articles have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and others. He is a columnist for The New York Times Magazine and 

According to an article in The Guardian, homophobia is a personal experience Washington was keen to depict in his fiction. He wasn’t interested in writing a collection where a character comes out and then everything’s great “because that’s not reality. You’re constantly coming out, you’re constantly negotiating the question of how much of yourself to reveal in any given place or time. Each character negotiates that question and those aspects in different ways. A goal of mine was to show a handful of different experiences without trying to state or subject them as being ‘the’ experience, because that doesn’t exist. There are as many of those as there are people.”

In an interview with Lambda Literary, Washington explained,  "I’m only interested in writing fiction about the people and places I’m interested in writing about. And the communities I care about are generally and specifically queer folks of color. So they’re who populate my stories."

His awards include the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, recognition in the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 and Forbes 30 Under 30, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, an O. Henry Award.

Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/08/bryan-washington-lot-interview-houston

https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/bryan-washington

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/19/these-are-not-the-margins-an-interview-with-bryan-washington-2/

https://lambdaliterary.org/2019/05/bryan-washington/