“MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY SON FEELS LIKE A ROUGH DRAFT. IT’S UNCHARTED TERRITORY.”

Photo by Sara Epstein.

An Interview with Brian Gresko

It’s funny to present Brian Gresko formally. As one of my brother’s childhood friends, he’s always lurked in my mental picture of our extended family. Why would he need introducing? (He did, however, always warrant both names, “Brian Gresko”, to distinguish him from the nameless rabble of Brians and Jennifers crowding schoolyards in the 1980s.)

I lost track of Brian when he and my brother entered different high schools. A good decade-and-a-half later, I noticed his byline popping up on The Huffington Post, The Atlantic.com, Salon, and The Daily Beast—interviewing great fiction writers I also admired. Following that modern rabbit-hole, the clickable link, I discovered it was the self-same Brian Gresko of yore, curiously unaltered from his boyish self, now a stay-at-home dad and writer whose work spans the life parental as well as literary. In addition to his writing on culture and gender roles, he writes excellently about parenting in a daily blog for Babble and others. He’s also the editor of the anthology When I First Held You, featuring twenty-two critically acclaimed authors on fatherhood, due out on May 6th from Berkley Books.

Brian and I recently caught up over drinks in Brooklyn. Minus the itchy Catholic-school plaid and plus boozier drinks, it felt like no time had passed at all. We’ve been in regular touch since, even more so since I got pregnant and had my first child, a son, last fall. We conducted this interview as parents of young children do, on nights and weekends, via what we dubbed “the world’s slowest game of email tennis.”

—Jude Stewart

I. FEAR CAN BE A SIGN THAT WE’RE ON AN IMPORTANT TRACK

THE BELIEVER: We’re here to talk about your anthology on fatherhood, but starting there feels like putting the cart before the horse. When and how did you know you were ready to become a father yourself?

BRIAN GRESKO:The when and where is easy: in the fall of 2006, in the outskirts of Shanghai, China. The how is a bit more involved. I’ve always liked kids, but the thought of being a dad scared me; it seemed so responsible, something a grown-up would do. I knew I’d screw it up somehow, and don’t like entering races I know I can’t win. But my girlfriend—whom I moved in with in my mid-twenties—wanted a family, and as thirty crept up I felt her need was becoming more urgent.

At the time, I was teaching middle school in East Harlem. I’d give my students pep talks about taking creative risks, but I wasn’t doing much to follow my own dreams...