Winner of the 2024 Fugere Book Prize for Finely Crafted Novellas
David W. Berner’s very first book was one he fashioned from crayons and papier-mâché, an elementary school project. The Cyclops was an undersea adventure born out of his fascination with the Jacque Cousteau television documentaries broadcast in the 1960s and 1970s about the ocean, the creatures that lived there, and the sea’s infinite mysteries. His mother kept the book all these years. It’s still on his shelf in the 8×10 writing shed where he writes today. It forever reminds him that stories are part of the human condition.
David was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a working-class neighborhood of steelworkers, carpenters, and postmen. As a young teenager, he found work delivering the daily newspaper on a 100-customer route that had also been his father’s when he was boy. “Delivering” the news would be a theme in his life. He began his career as a radio journalist in the months before he was awarded his undergraduate degree. Even as a boy, he had always been fascinated by the voices on the radio, believing that one day he would be one of them, spinning vinyl records on the local hit radio station. But his love of stories turned him toward journalism, and in the years the followed college, he worked for radio stations in Pittsburgh and then Chicago, freelancing at times for the CBS Radio Network and a producing a few stories for National Public Radio.
Burned out by daily journalism at the age of 46, David began a career in teaching. His first job was in an impoverished district outside Chicago and his experience there became his first book: Accidental Lessons. The memoir was awarded the 2011 Grand Prize for Literature, from the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards. It launched his writing career and he soon became a member of the tenured faculty at Columbia College Chicago.
David is the author of several award-winning books of memoir and fiction. His novel, A Well-Respected Man (Strategic Publishing) was honored by the Society of Midland Authors, and his memoir Any Road Will Take You There (Dream of Things Publishing) won the Book-of-the-Year Award for Indies from the Chicago Writers Association. His novella, The Islander (Outpost19 Books/The Shortish Project) has won several awards, including the Novella Prize from the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors. His short stories, essays, and poetry have been published in the Chicago Tribune, Coverstory Books, Beyond Words Magazine, and the Wild Roof Journal, to name a few.
David lives in Clarendon Hills, Illinois outside Chicago with his wife, Leslie, and their dog, Sam, who is the subject of one of his memoirs, Walks with Sam (Collective Ink Books, U.K.)
“I have been telling tales—truthful ones and made-up ones—for a long time. I get edgy when I’m not writing.”
