Who We Are 

Eric Olsen, Co-Publisher

Before helping to create BrightCity Books, Eric co-founded — with Glenn Schaeffer — and directed the Institute of Modern Letters, a literary think tank that provided support for writers who were victims of censorship. The Institute founded the first American City of Asylum, in Las Vegas, part of a network of about 30 such asylum programs, mostly in Europe. The Institute also created programs to support emerging writers in this country and abroad.

Before that, Eric was executive editor of custom publishing at Time Inc Health. And before that, he was a freelance journalist. He has published hundreds of magazine articles, a few short stories, and six nonfiction books.

Eric’s most recent book is We Wanted to be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, co-authored and edited with Glenn Schaeffer. The book is a collection of conversations among nearly 30 of their classmates and teachers about writing and the writing life. As the subtitle suggests, both Eric and Glenn are graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where Eric was a Teaching/Writing Fellow.

Despite common sense and the advice of family and friends, Eric continues to work on a novel.

Glenn Schaeffer, Co-Publisher

After getting his MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Glenn ventured into the business world, and more oddly still, the gaming biz in Las Vegas, where he rose rapidly to became president of Mandalay Resort Group, at the time one of the biggest gaming and entertainment companies in the world. Just how he ended up in the gaming biz after setting out to be a novelist is rather a long story, but in brief, he contends that the leap from the one endeavor to the other isn’t all that striking, that in fact creativity in the arts and in business spring from the same impulses and skills and attitudes, that in fact his time at Iowa was excellent preparation for his time in business. We Wanted to be Writers, which Glenn co-wrote with his Iowa classmate Eric Olsen, is in part a discussion of this relation between creativity in the arts and in business.

Later, Glenn moved on to become the president of Fontainebleau Resorts in Miami Beach, where he oversaw a billion-dollar remodel of the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel. It was in Miami Beach as well that BrightCity Books had its beginnings.

Glenn continued his interest in and support of literature throughout his business career, and in 2000, Glenn and Eric set up the Institute of Modern Letters, which provided support for writers in exile.

Now retired, Glenn’s finally finishing a novel he started in the Workshop nearly 50 years ago, Holy Shaker.

Cheryl Olsen, Executive Editor

After graduating from UC Berkeley, Cheryl entered a graduate program in ed psych, though she had been writing short stories for years. But just as the maze-running rats were making her squirrely, she fell under the spell of Filipino writer N.V.M. Gonzalez, who proffered encouragement, and Cheryl succumbed to the urge that had been flirting with her for years. She drove to Iowa City in a borrowed El Camino with bemused husband Eric in tow.

Cheryl wrapped up her MFA and soon got a job writing for The Iowa Scene. She was a pro. There was no turning back. Resettled later in California, Cheryl wrote for publications including Cosmopolitan, Via, Runner Magazine, and others. She was an editor and writer at City Sports Magazine for many years, a columnist for Women’s Sports and Fitness. She also taught college English for a number of years.

During their five-decade marriage, Cheryl and Eric have frequently written for the same publications and collaborated on literary projects, including BrightCity Books.

Bill Girsch, Art Director

Root canals paid the bills, and for many years Bill shared his clinical insights with Oregon Health Sciences University dental through his popular Mess of the Week course. But art and design have always been part of his life. From his meticulous illustrations in dental anatomy and endodontics textbooks, and his collaborative glass sculptures on exhibit in Oregon galleries, to logo designs for everything from fishing clubs to community restoration programs, his work spans the continent.

The Girsch-Olsen alliance, forged decades ago in Iowa City, where Gill was in dental school, continues with mutual admiration and mighty mirth. When Bill was still an undergrad at the University of Northern Iowa, the university commissioned a portrait of the then president, who was about to retire. The painting was done in the style then au courant, and thus more than a few of those who viewed it commented that it looked like it had been done in five minutes. Hearing the comment, Bill said he could beat that, no problem, and painted a parody of the president’s official portrait in a record-setting 3 minutes and 48 seconds. Both paintings are now on permanent display in the University’s Memorial Union.

Dave Hickey, Founding Editor

Sadly, Dave passed away in 2021. One of a handful of critics who “move markets,” Dave had written for most major American cultural publications, including Rolling Stone, ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, Interview, Harper’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. His collections of critical essays on art and culture, The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty and Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, are in their sixth and eighth printings respectively. Another collection of essays, Pirates and Farmers, was released by Ridinghouse in London in 2013. His most recent books were both published by the University of Chicago Press, which released 25 Women: Essays on Their Art in 2016 and Perfect Wave: More Essays on Art and Democracy in 2017.

After dropping out of a PhD program in lit, Dave became a songwriter and played backup guitar for Marshall Chapman, among others. Then he opened an art gallery in NYC. Then he began writing about rock music for Rolling Stone. From there, he became one of the most influential cultural critics in the world.

Everything BrightCity Books does has been influenced to some degree by Dave’s unique sense of style.