Through an intimate and intentional process, Slow Blink builds upon the fundamentals of oral storytelling to craft bold and engaging stories in service of honest and consistent communication practices.
With a background in traditional marketing and creative writing, Slow Blink saw a need for organizations to implement craft-based processes to tell compelling stories behind their brands. Having worked with clients across industries, Slow Blink has seen the endless impact of bringing writers into the rooms. Slow Blink’s vision is to fuse old school principles with innovative techniques, thereby blending together a for-profit mind with a non-profit heart.
Slow Blink’s approach builds upon the rich history and structure of storytelling with the goal to understand, ground and enlighten the human narratives that each organization holds within.
Today, Slow Blink collaborates with clients across industries — from small family businesses to healthcare organizations, arts nonprofits to advocacy groups — helping them slow down at the right time to effectively communicate with flexibility, speed, and endurance on behalf of their brands and communities.
What does
Slow Blink
mean?
The name “Slow Blink” comes from a lifelong study of creativity. Specifically, “combinatorial creativity,” or the process of combining old ideas to come up with something new. The name is a reminder to slow things down just enough to think more clearly, which means deeply, and thereby connectedly. The name is also an encouragement: Slow Blink’s tagline is, “Time to tell your story.” In that, it’s always time to tell your story, but also, you need to take the time in order to truly know, and tell, your story at speed and scale. And most personally, the name “Slow Blink” has a connection to cats: when a cat slow-blinks, it’s a sign of trust, safety, and love. And our founder just so happened to grow up with an aggressively cute, ginger cat named Punkin. May each blink be slow enough to refresh the way we see our stories, selves, and surroundings.
Bretty Rawson
Founder
Bretty is a Seattle-based narrative & story consultant. In 2022, they launched Slow Blink, distilling a fifteen-year career as a digital strategist for social-justice based nonprofits, government marketing agencies, and independent day schools. Prior to launching Slow Blink, they were the lead storyteller for the Washington wine industry, where they worked with 1,000 wineries and 400 grape growers to tell their individual and collective stories. At the time they left, WA Wine’s digital presence was the fastest growing in the world of wine.
The heart of Bretty’s work is community-building. After receiving an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School for Public Engagement in New York City, Bretty co-founded Seventh Wave, a BIPOC- and queer-run literary arts organization that publishes art in the space of social issues. Seventh Wave is the origin story for Story Anchors™ framework, as Bretty was tasked with audience development and building the voice of the brand. Most recently, Seventh Wave was a finalist for 2026 Best Writing Organization by AWP, and has been nationally recognized by the Community of Literary Magazine and Presses for its annual literary magazine, and has received funding from The Academy of American Poets, ArtsWA, and 4Culture, among others.
The focus of Bretty’s work has always been about elevating voices. For example, the bilingual storytelling program they built for Washington Wine, called “Breaking Ground,” was featured in Forbes for its innovative approach to community building in the wine industry (centering the farming community for the first time), and their digital exhibit To Whom It Should Concern, a partnership between Handwritten and Teens Take Charge, a student-led coalition in New York City, was featured by The New York Times for its innovative approach to addressing education inequity in the public school system. Their work has led him to stages of their own, delivering keynote speeches at writing symposiums, presenting at annual conferences on community building in the digital space, and hosting educational workshops for groups of marketing and communications professionals.
Bretty serves on the Board of Directors for Born to Adapt, and previously served on the Board of Directors for Seattle City of Literature. Storytelling has taken them around the world, from rural Japan to fishing canneries in Unalaska, Alaska. Most memorably, Bretty coached junior varsity soccer and golf at high schools, driving a yellow van to and from victory and defeat. They were also the lead interpreter for Yayoi Kusama’s head architect during the first build of her infinity room in New York City at The David Zwirner Art Gallery.