David Boles
David Boles has sustained an active, wide-ranging professional career across more than forty years. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and maintains memberships in the Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild, and PEN America. His work spans theater, broadcasting, streaming, publishing, and education, with a particular commitment to authorship as full responsibility: writing, directing, and producing rather than fragmenting creative control.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Boles began as a child actor, winning awards for singing, acting, and dancing. During his teen years, he hosted the Unique Youth radio show on KFOR-AM 1240 and KFRX-FM X103, and served as the weekly Teenaged Movie Critic for KOLN/KGIN-TV's Kidding Around program and the A Bolesful segment.
During his award-winning college career, David shifted into behind-the-scenes work in television, film, and live stage as writer, director, and producer. Original productions include The Westborough Crusaders television series for Cablevision, The Weeping Water Cafe (first produced on stage, then adapted for KPTM-TV), A Stone's Throw produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Theatre Arts & Dance, and the award-winning art house film Watershed.
He was the youngest undergraduate associate editor for the Prairie Schooner literary quarterly published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and his short story McDugan's Barn won the Mari Sandoz Prairie Schooner Award for Fiction in 1984.
David has consulted for Google, New York University, CBS Television, American Express, the City University of New York, Microsoft, Netscape, New Riders, ABC Pictures, the Nebraska ETV Network, Gillette Communications, and numerous other organizations.
Download David's complete Curriculum Vitae.
Recent Fiction
Fractional Fiction: A New Literary Series
Fractional Fiction is a literary production methodology that transforms public domain works through systematic synthesis with contemporary scientific research. Each novel begins with a classic source text, integrates current research from peer-reviewed domains, and follows established dramatic frameworks to create original narratives that carry the weight of literary tradition while speaking to present concerns.
The series methodology: classic literature + contemporary research + structural framework = original narrative. Not adaptation. Not pastiche. Transformation with purpose.
The Westborough Crusaders: A Young Adult Trilogy
In 1982, a sixteen-year-old wrote eight episodes of a dramatic television series about a high school newspaper, a dying boy, a bully, and the adults who failed all of them. Two episodes were produced for Cablevision, won a Cable ACE Award, and aired across the Omaha metropolitan area. The remaining six were never filmed. The scripts survived. Forty-four years later, the series becomes three novels: the year before the cameras arrive, the year they record, and the year after they leave.
Eight scripts. Two episodes. One trilogy. The characters are fictional. The feelings are not.
The EleMenTs Series: Young Adult Fantasy Trilogy
Four disabled teenage girls discover elemental powers that defy explanation. Elle is Deaf and commands wind. Meen is blind and controls fire. Teena has cerebral palsy and moves earth. Tal has autism and feels water. Their names encode their identity: take the right letters from Eleanor, Mingzhu, Christina Sarah, and Talia, and you spell EleMenTs.
Hunted by Prometheus Applied Sciences, they must choose between hiding and fighting for a world that has always underestimated them. The trilogy follows their arc from discovery in the tunnels beneath New York City to a Senate hearing in Washington where visibility becomes either liberation or the final vulnerability.
Language & Deaf Culture
ASL Linguistics for Practitioners
A textbook series co-authored with Janna Sweenie, MA. These advanced textbooks bridge the gap between theoretical linguistics and practical application, providing the rigorous frameworks that advanced signers, interpreters, and educators need.
Beyond the Hands examines non-manual grammar, discourse structure, and sentence types, revealing how the face carries grammar in ASL. Depicting Space addresses classifier morphology and spatial grammar, teaching signers to think spatially while signing temporally. Arm Angles in American Sign Language examines how the shoulder, elbow, and upper arm function as primary articulators, carrying semantic weight that affects meaning, register, and comprehension.
Anthologies & Collections
Current Work
David's current projects include the ASL Opera initiative, where he and Janna Sweenie bring American Sign Language interpretation to the international opera experience. He hosts the David Boles: Human Meme podcast, examining consciousness and the human condition, and publishes the weekly David Boles: Mechanized Morality newsletter on the displacement of human agency in an industrial world.
"I can't see what it is; and I don't know what it isn't."
For fifty years, David Boles Books Writing and Publishing has made the truth part of the public record through books, blogs, and performance scripts. With over fifty books in print and many more published as a publisher, David continues to write approximately two million words annually. The Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com has operated continuously since 1995.
Watch the daily David Boles LIVE! stream for ongoing commentary and conversation.
The Boles Constellation
Prairie Voice
Literary journalism examining old-time morals seeking standing in a modern world.
Read the Voice →Script Professor
Script doctoring services. "David Boles is Abe Burrows without the Pulitzers!"
Get Script Help →Boles Bells
Kettlebell fitness for those over 50. Strength training meets philosophy.
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Video Works
Gallery
Human Meme Podcast Archive
Connect
Follow on Mastodon at Boles.xyz. Download the complete Curriculum Vitae.