David R. Gillespie has been writing for most of his life, from the age of 10 when he talked his father into letting him use the construction company's mimeograph to run off a one-page neighborhood newspaper until the present.
He published his first article, Confessions of a Perplexed Presbyterian, in 1974 while a student at Covenant College, a private Presbyterian liberal arts school on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. It wasn't until 2000 that he turned his attention also to fiction, the year of his first published short story, The Last Hunt. He has published a number of essays, book reviews, opinion pieces and poems. His most recent short story, Down the River, was chosen for inclusion in Best Gay Love Stories 2006, published by Alyson Books.
David writes about what’s important to him, whether in the form of fiction or nonfiction. He writes as a queer individual, a southerner, as a self-identified postmodern, post-liberal, post-denominational Christian. He writes often about the intersection of sexuality and faith.
He explores those areas common to the experience of queer readers: loves found and lost, the intersection of faith and queerness, of growing up and being queer in what O’Connor called, “the Christ-haunted landscape” — that is, the American South.
Like many queer men of his generation, David spent a good deal of his life hiding his non-hetero sexuality, both behind the church and a brief marriage. During his third year in the pastorate, he concluded that he couldn't go on "playing the straight game" and resigned his pulpit and left the church which he was serving. He stayed away from the church for nearly 20 years. He began re-examining the relation between his faith and his sexuality while attending a liberal Presbyterian church in his hometown of Anderson, South Carolina (North Anderson Community Church, Presbyterian) and, with the help of numerous ministerial colleagues and friends, concluded that he could live as a queer man of faith without contradiction. He also began to reconsider his involvement in ministry and became very active in showing others, both queer and straight, that there one could be GLBTQ and a person of faith without conflict. He developed, while at NACCP, a workshop on The Bible and Homosexuality, which he has also presented in one form or another at numerous other churches and colleges.
After working for some time in GLBTQ journalism, David renewed his professional involvement in a faith community by accepting the position of Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg (SC). After two years as a Religious Educator, he began and completed a one-year Clinical Pastoral Education residency as a chaplain in a major healthcare facility which included a Level 1 Trauma Center and a mental health hospital. He continues to work and write in an effort to both educate gay and straight audiences about faith and sexuality and to convince other GLBTQ folks that being such does not require one to reject a religious life in toto.
He holds a Bachelor's degree from Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina, and a Master’s degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi — both conservative, evangelical Christian schools. This gives him a unique perspective from which to approach matters related to queerness and a life of faith.
His nonfiction has appeared in Q-Notes, OIA, The Greenville News, The Independent Mail, Point, The State, The Spartanburg Herald-Journal, the Gay and Lesbian Review, the Lambda Book Report, Books To Watch Out For, Whosoever.org, and many others.
His fiction has appeared in ByLines, My First Time Vol.3, Best Gay Love Stories 2006, Open Hands, Lonzie's Fried Chicken, Timelapse and The Independent Mail (a serialized murder mystery).
David's commentaries have been heard on Rainbow Radio (WOIC-AM 1230, Columbia, SC) and he has spoken at colleges and churches from South Carolina to Portland, Oregon. He blogs at "Southern Fried Faith" (http://david-gillespie.blogspot.com) and may be reached at scwriter29607@yahoo.com.
(This biographical statement provided by David Gillespie.)