By Marshall Hammond
“I’ve always felt a little pretentious identifying as an artist or a writer, but I’m trying to get over that and just be like, ‘Yeah, that’s what you do and that’s who you are,’” says Gabriel Matthew Granillo.
The 33-year-old Portlander has had a diverse career working as a reporter, editor and comic book creator. His passion for journalism began on a high school paper in Arizona. Like many journalists whose careers start this way, Granillo fell in love with the energy and camaraderie of the newsroom, as well as that special feeling of holding the latest edition hot off the press.
“At the end there is a physical manifestation of all the work that you put into it,” says Granillo. “And I just liked designing the paper with friends and having those conversations about what looks best and what feels good.”
After earning a Journalism degree from Northern Arizona University and working as a reporter for a few Arizona newspapers, Granillo moved to Portland in 2020.
He arrived just before the COVID pandemic. “I had one clean month of ‘normal Portland,’ before everything sort of hit the ground and got kind of weird,” says Granillo.
He took a job as a digital editor, then as associate editor at Portland Monthly, where he mostly wrote about health and wellness, and later travel and the outdoors. However, covering the pandemic and the George Floyd protests took a toll on Granillo. He found himself yearning to express another, more lighthearted, silly and creative side of his personality.
Granillo took a step back from fact-based reporting and accepted a job as an editor at ONI Press, a publisher known for graphic novels and comics, including Scott Pilgrim and Rick and Morty. He also began spending more time on his own creative writing pursuits.
“I’ve always been writing short stories and getting published here and there. But I think in the last couple of years I tried to put more of an emphasis on that part of my life and really try to identify myself as a writer,” he says.
Granillo began submitting his work more actively, and his poetry and short stories were published in a variety of online and print journals. One of his most recent personal works is The Keeper of Valuable Objects, a chapbook published by Bottlecap Press in September of 2024.
The Keeper of Valuable Objects consists of three short stories, “connected by shared themes of perception, identity and legacy.” The first story, Eddie V. on the Silver Screen, follows a Mexican actor in 1940s who struggles to hold onto his celebrity status as he ages out of the roles he was typecast into as a child. As the titular character grows more desperate, he enters a “devil at the crossroads” bargain with a mysterious stranger, the Keeper of Valuable Objects.
Granillo, a third-generation Mexican-American, drew inspiration for Eddie V. from his great uncle Fernando Alvarado, who, as a child actor, shared the screen with luminaries such as John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. The story is also inspired by the tradition of Latin American folk tales, which often blend humor, horror and the supernatural to create moral parables. It is written in the style of a grandfather reciting a fable to his grandchildren.
The next story, Studio C, centers on Ray Fonseca, a struggling late-night talk show host who goes by the name Ray Forte. While grappling with a crisis of identity and purpose, Ray inadvertently causes an incident that rockets his show to the top of the ratings charts.
The third story, Watch Out for Sprinkles, takes the form of a letter from an office worker, Rudy, to his father, Oscar Orlando, a moderately famous musician whose most successful song was inspired by a moment spent with his young son. Rudy struggles with the knowledge that his experience of the event was very different from the version his father shares with his audience. On top of that, Rudy finds himself thrust into the public spotlight in a most unfortunate, yet hilarious way.
Each of these stories contains a captivating blend of humor and tragedy, mundanity and profundity, leaving readers with much to ponder long after they’ve finished the chapbook.
“I try to not be terribly serious in my writing,” says Granillo. “Obviously, I think at the core of the stories there’s some sort of social political message. And I try to incorporate the different aspects of who I am.”
“I’m really interested in absurdism, surrealism and more recently folklore storytelling, so I try to just incorporate a lot of those elements of being a little bit silly, a little bit surreal, and a little serious to create something that’s enjoyable and feels complete,” he adds.
Granillo’s next big project is a novella that he is currently shopping around to publishers. He’s also been illustrating and writing comics, and plans to attend and distribute some of his work at the upcoming Emerald City and Rose City Comic Cons.
You can purchase The Keeper of Valuable Objects from bottlecap.press, and follow Granillo on Instagram and Bluesky. He is also a contributing writer for The Willamette Week.
Author Gabriel Granillo by Kelcie Smolin Grega.
