Charles Presti is a storyteller with a suitcase full of lived experience and just enough baggage to keep things interesting. A retired physician and informatics specialist, Chuck made an unlikely leap into writing, guided by dinner table stories that refused to stay put. What began as personal anecdotes has grown into an award-winning literary journey.
His debut novel, Covered in Flour, is a fictional memoir that captures the messy beauty of coming of age in a 1960s Italian-American suburb and earned the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel under 50,000 Words. The book reflects his enduring interest in memory, place, and the quiet truths that shape us.
In recent years, that instinct for structure and memory has expanded onto canvas. Working in a contemporary geometric style, Chuck builds paintings through deliberate planes that hold emotion in suspension, moments of devotion, stillness, and quiet tension contained within form. His work explores the charged space between movement and stillness, presence and absence, often focusing on figures and domestic scenes where time feels briefly contained.
Whether on the page or on canvas, his work draws deeply from his roots, including a childhood in Midwestern suburbia and an adulthood shaped by the journey of coming out and growing whole. Today, he lives and paints in Pensacola with his husband of over 30 years, Mike Bruce, and their spirited Wheaten Terrier, Zoey.
His storytelling has since branched into children’s literature with Zoe’s Garden Tales, a whimsical illustrated series that champions courage, kindness, and the quiet power of being different. The series includes The Silent Song of Harpo, a finalist in the 2025 Children’s Book International Competition; A Star, A Storm, and Her Chariot, featuring Astra, a resilient squirrel who rolls toward healing on her own terms; and Zoe Gets a Visitor, a story about unexpected friendship and the small acts of bravery that open both a garden and a heart. Narrated by the soulful and slightly sassy Arney the Armadillo, the series explores acceptance, quiet strength, and the search for belonging.
For reflections, soft observations, and whatever will not leave him alone until it is written down, Chuck shares his latest work on Substack. It is a gentler corner of the internet, part garden path and part back kitchen, where memory and meaning tend to show up uninvited and linger a while.
Together, Chuck and Mike co-founded Sunday’s Child in Pensacola, a nonprofit that funds local organizations championing diversity and inclusion. As the group’s inaugural president, Chuck helped shape a mission that reflects their shared commitment to creating a more welcoming community.