Frank Brinker is a Michigan-based aspiring writer and member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). He writes alongside a local writers’ group and draws deep from the well of his Peruvian-American heritage to shape the stories he tells.
As a Peruvian-American, Frank is passionate about weaving his heritage into his fiction — the mythologies, the landscapes, the in-between feeling of carrying two cultures at once. His work tends toward the lyrical and the strange: stories where the ordinary world bends just enough to let something older through.
His fiction has been featured in Mouthful of Salt and Dualiterary magazines.
A chef in Lima has his culinary philosophy centered on radical sourcing upended by a jar of ají amarillo paste made by Peruvian immigrants in New Jersey. The story's central tension is authenticity versus adaptation.
"The Tang of It" examines the relationship between food, memory, and grief. It follows Fred, a father of three, as a grocery store food demonstration triggers a longing to recreate his late grandmother's SPAM fried rice.
A Latina girl caught between fifth grade and a secret school in the Andes, in a world where nature has a voice and is asking for her help.
QueryingA girl just wants to be normal, but fairies need her special type of magic to return to power, and normal is out of the question for her now. But hey… she gets a dragon!
WritingMy mother grew up believing she descended from Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of Inca Princess Isabel Suárez Chimpu Ocllo. What better way to get to know my great-great-great-great-something than by writing a historical fiction manuscript about him? Does that make me Inca royalty too? My wife refuses to call me Prince, or King for that matter.
WritingEkphrastic story influence by Edward Hopper's People in the Sun.
RetiredEkphrastic story influence by Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad
RetiredThe instinct, when writing as a Peruvian-American, is to annotate — to explain the food, to footnote the mythology, to make sure no reader feels left out. I’ve been learning to resist that. The best version of this work trusts the reader, and trusts the specificity to carry its own meaning.
Continue reading →I’ve been attending regional SCBWI events for a couple of years now, and the thing that keeps surprising me is how much of writing children’s fiction is really just a heightened commitment to the sentence. Every word has to earn its place twice over.
Continue reading →Supay, Pachamama, the Amaru — Andean mythology isn’t a decorative layer for me. It’s closer to a way of reading the world. I’ve been thinking about what it means to bring those frameworks into contemporary fiction without flattening them into metaphor.
Continue reading →Whether you’re a reader, an editor, or a fellow writer looking to swap pages, I’d love to hear from you. The best way to reach me is by instagram.