Brett Leveridge was born at the Route 66 Lanes bowling alley in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, between the 7th and 8th frames of his mother's third perfect game in a four day stretch. He saw very little of his father, a traveling Druid evangelist, during his childhood; as a result, he grew up rough and he grew up wild and when he was only fifteen, he shot a man in El Reno just to watch him die.
Photograph: Annie Leibovitz Barely evading the heat, the fuzz, the coppers, Johnny Law, the gendarmes, he hotfooted it to New York City. It was in a Bowery mission, while awaiting a bowl of potato soup and some banana pudding, that he received his calling. He had a vision of a 70-foot tall zine and on the masthead of that zine, it read, "BRETTnews."
First published in the summer of 1991, Leveridge's journal of "pithy fluff" has garnered quite a following in the U.S. and around the world. The print edition is available by subscription and read avidly by folks from coast to coast.
Since premiering on the World Wide Web in October of 1994, BRETTnews has gone on to accrue honors and glowing notices across the Web and in the national press. A few weeks after going public, BRETTnews was selected Cool Site of the Day, by the man behind that very popular site, Glenn Davis. BRETTnews was named one of the "Top 100 sites on the Web" by Web100.com. Leveridge was profiled in the cover story of the spring issue of Virtual City, penned by Jesse Kornbluth, and that publication named BRETTnews a "CyberStar '96" award winner as the "Top Web Zine of 1996." In November of '94, Leveridge was selected as Time Inc.'s inaugural "Vibe Magazine Web Artist-in-Residence."
The mainstream press has also taken note of BRETTnews. Publications such as New York magazine, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, .net magazine, Long Island Newsday, The New York Daily News, Virtual City magazine, NetGuide magazine, The Boston Globe, Time Out New York magazine, New York Press, The Joe Bob Briggs Report, The Web magazine, The Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Psychotronic magazine have praised BRETTnews in both its print and Web incarnations.
Leveridge's work has been seen in various print and online publications as well. His "Men My Mother Dated" was a featured column in the dear, departed Might magazine for nearly two years, and he has also written for Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Virtual City, The Oklahoma Gazette, Egg, Salon, Urban Desires, Tripod, and City Search New York.
Leveridge is also an occasional contributor to the popular syndicated radio program This American Life and National Public Radio's All Things Considered and has also been featured on NPR's Weekly Edition.
Leveridge lives in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, where he spends most of his time alone with his memories. His critically acclaimed book, Men My Mother Dated (and Other Mostly True Tales), published in the spring of 2000 by Villard Books, was a finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor.