Cool Dad Job: Novelist

Cool Dad Vibe: Pure Talent

Cool Dad Bona Fides: Josh Weil is a writer’s writer, one who has been honored with all the snobby literary awards you can think of; the Pushcart Prize, The Nation Book Foundations’ 5 Under 35, and other accolades you can read about elsewhere. But you don’t read Weil and think about his lists of awards, you read him because he’s great and then you realize he can write just about anything. There’s The New Valley, a trio of novellas about hardscrabble men in the unforgiving Virginia backcountry; The Great Glass Sea, a novel, which takes a fantastical spin on brotherhood, family, and life in an alternate-present Russia; and The Age of Perpetual Light, a short story collection that follows a cast different characters from the creation of the lightbulb into a future that’s perpetually lit. Each is bizarre, beautiful, and brilliantly rendered. Weil is a father to a 3 year old boy and a step-father to a 15 year old girl, and lives in The Sierra Nevada.