DAVID WHELAN
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is a writer, educator and journalist from London, England, and the editorial assistant for reviews at Denver Quarterly
he is currently a PhD candidate in English & Literary Arts with a Concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Denver, where he has been awarded both a departmental and university fellowship
he holds a BA in English Literature from the University College, London, an MA in Fiction from the University of East Anglia, and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he was a Fiction Fellow
he has attended the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop
in 2019, he was a semi-finalist for the George Bennett Fellowship at the Philip Exeter Academy
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he is at work on two novels, both concerned with the entanglements of nationality, identity and climate. ON THE BACK OF BEASTS involves a highwayman in a future England journeying the land in search of meaning, FOREIGN OBJECT is a near-contemporary set alien possession novel. there are telepathic horses, raining fish and extraordinary moments of bathos. each are meant to be funny and dark, but not “darkly funny”
Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn and Gold Fame Citrus, compared his work to Nell Zink, Patrick deWitt and David Mitchell
Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Shirt among many others, said his writing “looks like no other”
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while for the past few years his focus has been on his novel, his short fiction is available online and in print, and he has written essays for VICE, Dazed, Time Out Magazine, Little White Lies and The Guardian, as well as a monthly article for Portfolio, FlyEmirates’s business class magazine, written multiple issues of Match of the Day Magazine, interviewed everyone from Mark Z. Danielewski to Deborah Levy, played a key role in the reemergence of Steve Bruce’s lost novels, appeared on live tv to talk tennis, gone on the radio to shame football ultras, and assisted in the research and development of documentaries for VICELAND
he has taught College Writing for two and a half years at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as an Undergraduate Fiction Workshop at the 300 level at the same university
he helped found and manage RADIUS, a community outreach project in Western Massachusetts designed to empower single mothers to utilise podcasting as a means of expression
he most recently lived in Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught english and ate an impertinent amount of okonomiyaki
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Fiction
Toward a Happy Culinary Life (Notes) - Bull
Leaky Feeder - Arcturus, the Chicago Review of Books
The Absent Word - 3:AM Magazine; republished as Horns in Litro (print)
Bad Cooking - UEA’s Prose Anthology 2013 (print)
Elsewhere, Somewhere Else - Five [Quarterly]
And Andrea - nth position
Viral Marketing - Valley Press FrontLines Anthology (print)
My Flower - Untitled Books’s New Voices
On the End of the World - Shortfire Press (digital purchase) (Submitted by editor Clare Hey for the BBC Short Story Prize)
Runners - Gutter 04 (print)
Criticism
A Brief Discussion of Ghosts - Frequencies Volume 2, Two Dollar Radio (print)
Essays
Things You Learn When A Longterm Relationship Collapses in Your Twenties - VICE
The Cult of Andy Murray - VICE
Why We Should All Be More Pretentious - VICE
What Does Our Obsession With True Crime Podcasts Say About Us? - VICE
A Moment that Changed Me: Becoming a Gym Fundamentalist - The Guardian
My Six Years with Jimmy Savile: An Interview with His Biographer - VICE
Why Do People Pretend to be Serial Killers? - VICE
The Absurd True Story of the Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football - Little White Lies
I’ve Never Watched Comedy - Does that Make Me an Imbecile? - VICE
Does Tennis Have a Race Problem? - VICE
Getting Underneath China’s Obsession with Hyper-Real Sex Dolls- VICE
What It’s Like Recovering from A Suicide Attempt - VICE
Getting Inside the Strange, Secret World of Studio Ghibli - DAZED
Mad Men and Bad Men: How Elite Advertisers Shaped British Politics - VICE
The Utopia of Rules - VICE
The Terrifying Consequences of Your Internet Addiction - MOTHERBOARD
TED Talks Aren’t Making Our Generation Smart, They’re Making Us Stupid - VICE
These Photographers Take Better Family Photographs Than You - DAZED
In India’s Mass Sterilisation Camps, Women Trade Fertility for Mobile Phones - VICE
It’s Very Easy to Get Away with Lying About North Korea - VICE
Should the World be Funding Food Aid to North Korea? - VICE
Poetry
g/4/g - Five[Two]One Magazine (print)
A Plexiglass Coffin - Boink! Magazine
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david can be reached via email here or twitter, where he is verified because why not? he is open for commissions, queries and the opportunity to no longer write in the third person
© DAVID WHELAN