BRENDAN GILLEN
Writer | Creative Director | Director
About Brendan
Brendan Gillen is an Emmy-winning writer living in Brooklyn. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and appears in the Florida Review, Wigleaf, Taco Bell Quarterly, New Delta Review, HAD, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His first novel, STATIC, is available now via Vine Leaves Press, and has earned attention from Electric Lit, Write or Die, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.
As a partner and writer/director at Boomshot, Brendan has developed content for ESPN, FanDuel, NASCAR, Condé Nast, Fox Sports, BBC, the U.S. Open, Resy, Anheuser-Busch and others. Before joining Boomshot, he developed his creative and storytelling capabilities at ESPN, producing original content for the FIFA World Cup, the NBA on ESPN, Sunday Night Baseball, Grantland, Monday Night Football, and more.
His work has received attention in the New York Times, Mashable, the Washington Post, USA Today’s “For the Win,” SportsIllustrated.com, the Huffington Post and People.com, among others. He earned a Sports Emmy for his work on the campaign for the 2014 FIFA World Cup on ESPN.
Awards & Recognition
Sports Emmy Awards 2015 — Outstanding Promotional Announcement
New York Times — "Voice of Soccer Calls the Action Well Off the Field"
Mashable — "ESPN Makes Sport of Your Dating Woes"
Washington Post — "The best World Cup commercial..."
USA Today's "For the Win" — "The only World Cup commercial you need to see"
SportsIllustrated.com — "First date narrator extraordinaire"
Sporting News — "Steph Curry battles Ayesha Curry in 'Kitchen Warriors'"
CBS Sports — "Stephen Curry and family star in 'Kitchen Warriors'"
Experience
Boomshot New York
Writer/Creative Director (2016 - Present)
ESPN New York
Associate Director (2015 - 2016)
Manager (2014 - 2015)
Associate Manager (2012 - 2014)
Coordinator (2010 - 2012)
Sacks & Co. New York
Publicist (2008 - 2010)
Associate Publicist (2006 - 2008)
Education
City College of New York
MFA in Fiction
2016 - 2019
University of Virginia
B.S. in Commerce with Distinction; Marketing
2002 - 2006