J. David is a laboratory scientist from Cleveland, Ohio and serves as poetry editor for Flypaper Magazine. Lately they have been thinking a lot about why we feel love so acutely as distance and trying to find joy in as many places as possible. They spend their free time at coffee shops, in museums, at concerts, or training to run a marathon. J.’s writing attempts to construct a conversation between science and art, explores the shifting of identity in relationship to space, seeks to educate about mental illness, and reckons with collective grief. Their writing includes recovery narratives, documentation of adolescence, and an obsession with survival.

On J.’s must read list is If One of Us Should Fall by Nicole Terez Dutton, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much by Hanif Abdurraqib, For the Love of Endings by Ben Purkert, Rail by Kai Carlson-Wei, Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck, Ebb by Leila Chatti, Ariel by Sylvia Plath, and a host of others.

Website: jdavidpoetry.weebly.com