Meet Tres Dean | Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tres Dean and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tres, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I’m from Richmond, Virginia and that city has everything to do with who I am today. Richmond’s a special town, just enough of a big city to keep locals around and attract transplants and just small enough to run into someone you know every time you’re at the grocery store. It’s home to my alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University, which houses the number-one ranked public arts school in the country. It’s also a service industry town (real ones know it’s got some of the best dining on the east coast) and as a result cost of living stays low. Because of this, every year there’s a new influx of art school freshman who, upon graduating, can actually afford to stick around, work 25 hours a week at a bar or coffee shop or restaurant, whatever, and still have the time and energy to make shit. As a result the art scene is booming, it’s a great literary hub, and perhaps most prominently the music scene is insane, especially when it comes to punk, hardcore, and metal (shoutout to the local legends: Gwar, Lamb of God, Down to Nothing, Municipal Waste…Jason Mraz, I guess?).

All of this is to say that it’s the perfect town to grow up in and spend your formative young adult years if you’re a person who wants to work in a creative field. It gave me the space to grow in my early years as a writer and coming up in the town’s punk scene instilled a real no-bullshit sort of work ethic in me, as I believe it does to anyone else who passes through it at a young age.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ve got a weird job, man. Since 2017 I’ve been working full time (and part time before that) as a writer across a variety of mediums, the bulk of which include publishing nonfiction books about film and pop culture, working as a journalist for publications like GQ and Vulture, and writing comic books as well. There are different origin stories for each but these days they all stem from the same motivating factor, that being that my rent is due on the first of each month and my building manager doesn’t really care if the muse wasn’t striking quite right for a few weeks. This isn’t to say I’m dispassionate about what I do – quite the contrary, really. I cannot remember a time I didn’t want to write or tell stories. I do remember the moment it occurred to me that some form of writing might be a more viable career than my primary plan at the time (rock star – which has yet to pan out but I’m still holding out hope), and that was when I saw my first Quentin Tarantino movie as a high school sophomore. I remember feeling incredibly drawn to the way he used dialogue as the driving force of everything from character building to drawing out tension, even if the characters onscreen were just quipping back and forth about music or movies, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, hey, I want to do that.’ From there it’s been a strange, zig-zagging path with landmarks that include that aforementioned creative writing course, an internship at Marvel Comics, traveling the east coast with self-published comic books in my backpack and hitting every major convention I could get a ride to for years and years on end, and a part-time gig writing clickbait in 2017 that happened to pay enough money to let me start to use writing as my full-time source of income. My working in a variety of mediums stems both from necessity and curiosity. In terms of the former, none of the fields I work in pay enough on their own to keep the lights on. It’s only by juggling all three that I’m able to live semi-comfortably as a full time writer. Doing so feeds into the latter, the curiosity. The reality is that I’d still be trying to work across all of those mediums even if it weren’t a necessity because, well, I love it. I love making comics, I love doing deep research dives on movie stars and directors when I’m writing a book, and I love the day-to-day of journalism where I get to explore my passions freely and interview everyone from James Beard Award-winning chefs to NBA superstars. I like to think that because of this I’ve established a healthy mix of passion and professionalism. It’s what I love, sure, but it’s also a job. I can’t afford to be precious about what I do. Rent’s still due on the first of every month.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m still pretty new to Los Angeles but have found such joy in showing loved ones around when they’re in town (largely because being here and exploring the city has brought me happiness in a way I don’t think any city I’ve lived in has). I know that the most reliable spot I’ve been hitting with friends and family when they’re in town is Larchmont Village – because that’s where I spend most of my afternoons anyway. Grab a cup of coffee, browse around Chevalier’s, Corridor, and Wittmore, maybe get some ice cream, that’s a nice afternoon. I’m a real sucker for old Hollywood haunts so I always suggest El Coyote and if we’re going to work in a fancier dinner I’ll tend to try for Dan Tana’s or Musso & Frank. If we’re going for a slightly more lowkey vibe I really love heading through Alhambra and getting dim sum at literally any dim sum spot there. And then in terms of junk food I’ll go Fat Sal’s and Fatburger, if only to try to convince them that it’s better than In n Out (which it is). Other hits? Karaoke at Brass Monkey, a movie at the Aero or the New Beverly, and if it’s in season, an LAFC match – legitimately the most electric crowd I’ve ever been a part of at any sporting event.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The first person to come to mind was David Robbins, my creative writing teacher in college. Professor Robbins (“PR” as we called him) taught a course called Art of the Narrative at VCU and was the first mentor to really sit me down and teach me that direct and measured criticism could be a display of love and guidance. Everybody who came through that class with me left it SO much more talented a writer than when they entered because PR encouraged us to be direct and thorough in our critiques of one another’s work. I truly consider my first workshop there one of the more important afternoons of my life. I had written this TERRIBLE story that I very much didn’t think was terrible and had to sit there for 45 minutes (45 minutes that felt like hours) while everyone in that class explained every single thing I’d done wrong in the story, why it was lazy, how I broke the POV every few sentences, just every conceivable detail. It was, I realized, an unsalvageable story. There was no good version of something so fundamentally flawed from ideation. It could have been demoralizing. It wasn’t. Like everyone else who had a bad critique session in that class, I took what I learned and applied it to my next story, which went on to be selected as one of the best of the semester. That honor has, over the years, meant more to me than far more “legitimate” accolades. It was the first time I was able to turn a setback into a win. It also fostered a real sense of camaraderie amongst all of the students in the class. I’m still in touch with them to this day whereas I barely remember the faces or stories from other creative writing courses I took in college. All of this is because of the environment PR went so out of his way to foster in his class. It was the highlight of my time in college and I still keep his lessons in mind when I write today.

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Twitter: @treswritesstuff