David Giffels
Creative Nonfiction | Campus Coordinator | The University of Akron
Contact
Phone | (330) 972-6604
Email | dg36@uakron.edu
Web | www.davidgiffels.com
Recent Publications
SELECTED BOOKS
THE BEGINNING WAS THE END: Devo in Ohio, co-written with Jade Dellinger, University of Akron Press, 2023.
Italian translation: DEVO: L’INIZIO ERA LA FINE. Red Star Press, Rome, 2025.
BARNSTORMING OHIO: To Understand America. Hachette Books, 2020.
FURNISHING ETERNITY: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and a Measure of Life. Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2018.
THE HARD WAY ON PURPOSE: Essays and Dispatches From the Rust Belt. Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2014.
ALL THE WAY HOME: Building a Family in a Falling-down House. William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2008.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
“Dreaming of Heroes,” Essay in Saying It Plain: An American Patchwork, ed. Jill Gerard, Chautauqua Institution, 2025.
“The Akron Sound,” Chapter in Akron at 200: A Bicentennial History, University of Akron Press, 2025.
“These Times,” Catalogue essay for Chronicles: The Great Depression and the Pandemic, Allen County (Ohio) Museum, 2024.
“Unreal Estates.” Essay introduction to The New Heartland: Looking for the American Dream, by Andrew Borowiec, George F. Thompson Publishing, September 2, 2019.
“Dumbphone.” The Iowa Review, Winter 2018/2019.
“Shirt Worthy.” (Reprint in “The Best of Our ‘Lives’ Column”). The New York Times Magazine, March 24, 2017.
“Dispatch from a Ghost Town.” The Atlantic, July 22, 2016.
“No Place Like Akron.” Parade, June 22, 2014.
“The Taj Majal.” Esquire, April 19, 2014.
“The Chosen Ones: LeBron and Akron.” Grantland, March 21, 2014.
About David
David Giffels is an award-winning author, essayist, and journalist whose work chronicles the American Midwest and its Rust-Belt culture. He has been characterized as “the bard of Akron, Ohio,” by the New York Times Book Review,” “a voice of the Midwest” by Library Journal, and “essential” by the Los Angeles Review of Books.
His 2020 book Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America (Hachette Books), was described by Publishers Weekly as a “trenchant mix of memoir, reportage, and political analysis,” and selected as one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2020. His other books include the memoirs Furnishing Eternity (Scribner, 2018), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and winner of the Ohioana Book Award and All the Way Home (William Morrow, 2008), also winner of the Ohioana Book Award and an Oprah “Fantastic Summer Read.” His essay collection The Hard Way on Purpose (Scribner, 2014), was a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. He has coauthored, with Jade Dellinger, two biographies of the rock band Devo.
Giffels has been awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for literature, the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a General Excellence award from National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
A former columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal, his writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Parade, Grantland, The Iowa Review, Esquire, and many other publications. He also wrote for the MTV animated series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Akron, where he serves on the faculty of the NEOMFA creative writing program.
Where did you grow up?
Akron, Ohio.
What is one of your favorite places in Akron?
Cadillac Hill.
Your most awkward moment with a famous writer?
I pulled a string to (I thought) join Dave Eggers for dinner before a reading at Playhouse Square. He’s one of my favorite writers. It turns out “dinner” was two stainless steel covered catering dishes delivered to a tiny theater dressing room—one for him and one for the evening’s emcee. I was already in the room and couldn’t find a graceful way to depart. The meals—chicken breast, potatoes, and green beans—were delivered without silverware. Eggers, on a tight schedule and not wanting to be a bother, sheepishly began eating with his fingers. I wished him well and slunk to the lobby and out onto Euclid Avenue.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
The Beastie Boys Book, Lawrence Wright’s God Save Texas, Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, Best American Essays 2018, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Autumn, Timex clock radio, empty martini glass.
Your craziest/most interesting teacher?
Sister Benita, my freshman-year English teacher at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron. She was an ancient hyper-grammarian. We diagrammed sentences; we practiced pronunciation; we were drilled on all the rules of usage. (Including the proper pronunciation of “usage.”) It was like boot camp for writing. I’ve always been thankful for it.
Your best piece of advice for a young writer?
Read, read, read.
If you could have a superpower what superpower would it be?
Prince: in concert.
In two sentences or less what does the NEOMFA mean to you?
It’s the best writing community I’ve ever been a part of.
Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts
Department of English
Cleveland State University
Music & Communications Building 234
2121 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216) 687-3957
info@neomfa.org
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