My name is Wesley. If you ask my dad, he will tell you he wanted to name me “Wesley Virginia” after his home state. If you ask my mom, she will tell you a long story about a badass businesswoman named George and the power of assumptions in the face of misogyny.
In case the paragraph above didn’t make it clear, I was raised by Deadheads in Northern California. I live in Brooklyn now, by way of New England, New Zealand, and Australia.
I write fiction about found families, alienation, and how where we live shapes who we are. I write nonfiction about international bar culture. Until Covid, I also worked as a cocktail bartender. Perhaps inevitably, I wrote a book about it: The Bartender’s Cure came out in June 2022 from Flatiron Books.
I received my MFA from Brooklyn College in 2019, where I served as an editor for The Brooklyn Review, and I’m represented by Rebecca Gradinger of UTA.
Wesley Straton 