In May of 1972, after earning an M.A. in Literature, I stuck my thumb out on I-70 in Baltimore and hitchhiked to California. I spent the next six years driving a cab in San Francisco and living the writer’s life. Along with other hackers, we launched the New Deep City Press, running 4-color copies off a Gestetner. I was the editor, and we sold the quarterly for a buck out of City Lights bookstore. Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder was one of its contributors. CL owner and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti called DCP his “best-selling little mag.” The New Deep City Press is now in the Smithsonian as an example of working-class writing.
During this time, I wrote a Maya fable, Rainman, which attracted an agent, Elizabeth Pomada of Pomada/Larson. There was a nibble from Putnam, but it wasn’t meant to be, so, at the age of 30, I returned to the “brown and holy East” (Jack Kerouac) and entered a new line of fiction, advertising and public relations, working for agencies from Tokyo to DC. While in Tokyo, I helped launch a bilingual magazine, The Plaza.
In 2004, my poetry book, Twitchy Fingers & Itchy Eyes,was published by Bow Wow Press.
When I retired from teaching writing at the University of Maryland in 2015, I had the luxury of devoting myself to literary fiction. Out of that came a rewrite of the Maya fable, Love Thief, the Legend of Ixmal the Healer, cited by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books of 2019: “An excellent tale that serves as both a thriller and an anthropological portrait.” It also garnered recognition from the Baltimore Sun and Fox 45 News. See my 4-minute interview on lovethiefnovel.com.
I recently completed Love Is Where You Find It, a collection of stories inspired by James Joyce’s Dubliners. I am honored that my second poetry book, A Mind Full of Nothing, has found a place in the Poets’ Cooperative.
You can download David's e-book, A Mind Full of Nothing from the Internet Poets' Cooperative free e-book collection. |
