Blake Gillespie is…

A journalist, photographer, and writer. He loves the game of basketball. His sports writing has appeared in Vice Sports, the East Bay Express, the Sacramento News & Review, the Sacramento Bee, the Eephus (a sports journal published by the Los Angeles Review of Books), and SLAM. Sacred Vol.I is his first book, a way of finding a lane that he’d once naively assumed would require permission.

He is thinking of giving up third person perspective.

He is based in New York City, but maintains strong ties to and love for Sacramento, CA. He was born in Ohio.

Recently, I gave up third person perspective. It might have had something to do with the evolving nature of this website and the project I call Sacred, which oscillates between whittling down to the essential and expanding at the same rate as the universe. Earlier when I wrote “he loves the game of basketball,” it was inaccurate. I should have said, I love basketball. Those three words better represent my relationship which goes beyond the game and into everything that basketball touches and represents. For instance, I love the sound of basketball. I will stop everything I’m doing just to confirm that I hear a basketball being dribbled within my surroundings. In the realm where “do what you love” intersects with “write what you know,” I started Sacred. At first it was just a short book about free throws that I self-published in 2019.

Now, Sacred is a sports journal. It’s also far more than that. At any point it could cease being a sports journal. As a self-published project there are no barriers and no rules. All duende. Sacred Vol.1 is a collection of personal essays, meditations, mantras, research, and stream-of-conscious writing. It is guided but not instructional. Vol.I was a limited pressing of 100 that sold out within six months of release. Sacred is also my 35mm photography. Sacred is collaborative. It’s interviews and personal essays and guest storytelling. Sacred is even me, at the park or in an elementary gym, with a collection of grown men playing pick-up. Thanks for stopping by.

Sacred Vol.1 was released in November 2019.
Sacred launched its apparel on October 2021.

My essay “A Meditation On The Worm” was published in the French zine Planche Edition no.1: Some Kind of Tribe (2021).