Personal Statement My friends know me as a diehard urbanite, but I was born in rural Iowa and grew up in a small North Dakota farming town. My father was a minister, and my mother dreamed that I would become either a doctor (to take care of her in her old age) or a pianist (like Liberace, only she had no idea he was gay). It took me ten years to appreciate the piano lessons that were forced on me, and not long after that it became clear I’d never make it on the concert stage. In high school, I lettered in baseball, football, basketball, and track. I was active in politics through college, but in graduate school I decided I’d rather study political behavior than practice it. My career as a political scientist peaked with the critical acclaim of my first book, The Cultural Limits of Revolutionary Politics, but I returned home from a world conference in Germany to find myself denied tenure. (Publish and perish.) Disillusioned, I left academia and discovered a wealth of new opportunities that were far more interesting. Seattle has been home since 1973, minus several short-term residencies elsewhere. Other places where I’ve lived are Northfield, Minnesota, during my college years; Washington, D.C., and Princeton, New Jersey, for graduate school; Budapest and Vienna during a year as a Fulbright fellow; and five miles outside the city limits of Everett, Washington, for a seven-month respite between careers.

Here I am, some years ago, in Spain’s fabled region of La Mancha after conquering one of Don Quixote’s windmills. But where is my horse?

I spent the first 20 years of my adult life becoming a specialist, but since then I’ve been eagerly “despecializing.” It started with political science and political risk analysis. Then, after two books and about three dozen articles, I followed my heart to film criticism, fiction, screenplays, and a handful of poetry translations. My head then led me to computer documentation, various types of business and technical writing, a co-authored book about the World Wide Web, and a series of essays, again co-authored, about communication skills in the era of globalization. I’m particularly proud to see my name on the cover alongside that of Craig Rennebohm, a longtime friend who has dedicated his life to helping the most marginal members of our community. Our first book, Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets (Beacon Press, 2008), is available in hardback and will be out in a paperback version in May 2009. We have outlined our second book and are trying to create the time to write it. I have ghostwritten, book-doctored, or edited several other books (and several dozen articles) that do not bear my name, and I’m also proud of them. I love helping others find their voice and get their best writing on paper or online. In all projects, my objectives are to achieve clarity and express the message, theme, or story in the truest and most appropriate voice.

Back to Resume Copyright © 1998-2005 by David W. Paul. All rights reserved. Button art credit: Jelane’s Graphics