‏David Shields‏

David Shields graduated, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Brown University in 1978. In 1980, he received an MFA in Fiction, with honors, from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Shields' first novel, Heroes, was published in 1984. From 1985 to 1988, he was a visiting assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. In 1989, he published his second novel, Dead Languages, a book about a boy who stutters so badly that he worships words. Shields' third book, Handbook for Drowning: A Novel in Stories (1992), marked the beginning of his shift from traditional literary fiction toward collage, the blurring of genres, essay, and autobiography. This shift continued and deepened in such books as Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (1996), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (1999), Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography (2002), and The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (2008). Shields' next book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), argues for the obliteration of distinctions between genres, the overturning of laws regarding appropriation, and the creation of new forms for a new millennium.

Shields lives with his wife in Seattle, where he is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the faculty in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. His work has been translated into twenty languages.