Richard Grayson (writer) - Recent Work

Recent Work

Although Grayson had originally published some of the stories in The Silicon Valley Diet on early internet sites that featured short fiction, in 2004 he began appearing widely in various literary webzines with his memoirs, satire, and stories. His "Diary of a Congressional Candidate in Florida's Fourth Congressional District," a recurring feature on the website of McSweeney's, covered his 2004 campaign as the sole opponent to Rep. Ander Crenshaw, a Jacksonville Republican, and brought him a new audience.

More recently, Grayson published two short story collections almost simultaneously. The more experimental book was Highly Irregular Stories (2006), which Kirkus Discoveries called "an eclectic anthology of intriguing short stories...Grayson’s stories here recall no one so much as Richard Brautigan, who walked a similar line between wit and warmth in his more eccentric novels." The second volume, And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street, which Kirkus Discoveries termed " funny, odd, somehow familiar and fully convincing fictional world," featured more representational and autobiographical stories, mostly set in the author's native Brooklyn.

While the literary reference volume Contemporary Literary Criticism has called Grayson "a marginal figure in contemporary American fiction," it also noted that "he and his fictional persona seem quite aware of this fact" and that "aken as a body of work, Grayson's short fiction ultimately appears to be one ongoing, career-long writing project, focused always on the effects of contemporary culture on the self."

In 2010, Grayson ran as the Green Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Arizona's 6th Congressional District and finished fourth. In February 2012, Grayson got 39 votes as a candidate in the Arizona Green Party presidential preference primary, finishing in a tie for third place, and in November 2012, he was the Americans Elect Party candidate in Arizona's 4th Congressional District, getting just under 1% of the vote.