Saturday, July 21, 2012

Eisner Bio

Brian Loo is a third-generation Chinese American and a Muslim convert who has spent time teaching English in refugee camps in the West Bank, studying Arabic in Cairo, and living out of his minivan like a vagabond. Despite all of this he is remarkably ordinary. Boring, even. In 2006 he received his B.A. in English literature and Near Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley. At some point he decided to go back to Cal for an M.S. in Environmental Engineering. To this day he does not understand how he made this decision.
Brian started writing this collection of short stories because he found the state of existing environmentalist literature to be dismal and thought that he could do better. Halfway through he realized he couldn't. Several months ago he realized he needed more pages to meet the Eisner prize length requirements, so he threw in two stories about Muslim Americans and Palestine, and one story with a poorly written second half. He suspects the judge did not read those stories.
Brian currently resides in Washington, D.C. where he is looking for a job that will allow him to coexist peacefully with both his guilty liberal conscience and his ailing bank account. In the meantime, he plans to finish writing his collection of short stories and, God Willing, publish them however he can.