Bryan Washington is the award-winning author of Lot, a collection of stories, and the novels Memorial and Family Meal. His story collection Lot won the 2019 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize, the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, and was the 2019 honoree of the 5 Under 35 award. Lot is likely his most well-known work today—being highlighted too in former president Barack Obama’s annual “favorite books” list published via social media (to which this is meaningful). Washington’s book Palaver was a 2025 finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Washington grew up in Katy, Texas, a suburb 30 miles west of Houston, and attended the University of Houston for his undergrad before attending the University of New Orleans for his MFA. Washington, in 2020, was a Scholar in Residence for Racial Justice at Rice University.

Washington now splits his time between Houston and Japan. His connection to Japan and Japanese culture is a through-line in his life—as a child, his dad, who was fond of travel, wore kimonos around Washington’s childhood home. Growing up as Black and Gay, Washington bucked expectations of playing youth football and studied Japanese, a language that he knew was popular but impractical. In school, he had a Japanese pen pal named Tetsu. Later in life, his connection to and with Japan only grew, mirroring a growing dissatisfaction with the United States around 2017. Washington’s book Palaver is about an estranged queer and Black American English tutor in Japan; the story mirrors Washington’s own life, as the story flashes back to moments in Houston TX.