Bretty Rawson is a Seattle-based handwriter, dachshund dad, and trail runner.
In 2022, Bretty founded Slow Blink, a storytelling agency that distills his 15-year career as a digital and operations strategist for social-issue based nonprofits, government marketing agencies, and independent day schools in Washington State and New York. You can read more about “story anchors” here, the narrative framework and foundation of Slow Blink.
Most recently, Bretty ran digital for Washington Wine, where he worked with 1,000+ wineries and 400+ grape growers to tell—over the course of nearly five years—1,980 stories about the past, present, and future of the Washington wine region. Overseeing digital, Bretty produced Sommlight, a 40-episode podcast series that was a finalist in 2021 for Best Marketing Program; produced a wine and food show with Chef Andre Bopp; brought in tech partners to build a mobile tourism app for the region; and ran monthly newsletter about social media and storytelling that reached 10K people. His culminating work for the grape farming community was Breaking Ground, a bilingual storytelling platform for farmers that was featured in Forbes for its innovate approach to storytelling in wine. At the time he left, their digital presence was the fastest growing in the world of wine. You can see the story anchor work he did for WA Wine here.
At the core of Bretty’s work is community-building. In 2015, after receiving an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School for Public Engagement in New York City, Bretty co-founded the national arts nonprofit The Seventh Wave, a BIPOC- and queer-run magazine that publishes art in the space of social issues, which was a finalist for the Firecracker Awards in 2021 for Best Magazine. As director of programs, Bretty built and runs “Community Anthologies,” a cohort-based storytelling platform that gives TSW’s editorial keys to curators, which received funding from a major foundation. He also designed and oversees their digital residency program, an incubator for conversation, mentorship, and community. A hand-writer at heart, you can see Bretty’s offline passion on the online platform, handwritten, which has been featured in The New York Times, Heritage Radio Network, Atlas Obscura, Real Simple, among others, and has partnered with The Sketchbook Project, the Morgan Library & Museum, Kochi-based LetterFarms, The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, and more. After a four-year pause, handwritten is resuming publishing in Summer 2024.
Connecting w/ Bretty.
Interested in Bretty’s work or in working with Bretty via Slow Blink? Are you curious about The Seventh Wave, and/or how to join TSW’s digital community of 250+ artists, writers, and activists around the world? Are you a writer or artist wanting Bretty to build or refresh your website? Thinking to commission artwork from Bretty? Navigating the world of branding, craft, and digital storytelling in nonprofit, corporate, or tech environments? Fill out the form to the right and Bretty will be in touch within a week.