Evan Gillissie

I’m Evan Gillissie. I grew up in Cranston, Rhode Island, and I’ve spent nearly fifteen years in Washington, D.C. I came for college and for politics, and I stayed for the life I built here — the work, the city, the people.

Politics got hold of me early. My first campaign was in 2009, at fifteen, and I’ve worked more races since than I can easily count — including a governor’s race I managed in 2022 that I’ll be making sense of for the rest of my life. I studied political science at Catholic University, spent time inside the federal government — OMB, the CFPB, the Hill — and moved from there into advocacy and, eventually, technology policy, which is what I do now, as an in-house lobbyist. None of that work was ever neutral. I believe things, I have for a long time, and I’ve spent my career trying to serve those beliefs as well as I know how.

What took me years to work out was how what I believe is supposed to sit next to everyone else’s, and what I’m meant to do about it. The campaigns and the titles were where I went looking for the answer. They were never the answer themselves.

I’ll be straight about where that’s left me: fairly isolated, politically, and most of it traces to what our public conversation has become. I don’t recognize much of how we talk to each other now, and I’ve stopped pretending I do. But I’m not bitter, I’m not cynical, and I’m not done. It takes all kinds to make the world go round, and I intend to keep playing my part — as clearly and as honestly as I can.

So I built a place to do it. What began as a handful of essays has grown into something closer to a publishing house of my own — a lot of rooms, all of it mine, built by hand. There are the essays, on politics and work and whatever’s in front of me. A research desk, where I take apart the things that won’t leave me alone. A working encyclopedia of philosophers, built one entry at a time. My library — every book I own, catalogued by hand and mapped by how each one led to the next. And audio, for the pieces better heard than read. I keep adding to it. If you want to know me, this is the truest way in — not the bio, the work.

I write here independently — by hand first, typed up later — and it’s entirely my own. It’s reader-supported, which is, honestly, a little uncomfortable for me; I don’t want the numbers to become the point. My only real aim is to stay proud of what I put my name to. An offering, not a pitch — and if it’s worth something to you, that’s what a subscription is for.

A handful of readers have become something closer to collaborators. They see the work early, they have a real say in where it goes, and my door is open. I don’t think of them as a tier. They’re the people I get to think it through with.

That’s the shape of it. Someone from Rhode Island who cares a great deal, works in a hard business, and tries to write honestly about all of it. If any of it resonates, I’m glad you came.