David Hatfield Sparks

Poet, Creative Nonfiction Writer

Chicago, IL
Illinois US
Email: 
davran@mindspring.com

Author's Bio

  • David Hatfield Sparks is a writer, musician, librarian, and gay father who written and performed from the Midwest and Manhattan to Austin, Texas and San Francisco, where he has been active in queer artists and writers communities. His work focuses on music/performance/research/politics of gender, religion, the arts, and myth in LGBTQIA multicultual contexts. He, along with his husband of 41 years Randy P. Conner, was an original participant in the El Mundo Zurdo Reading Series in San Francisco curated by the late Gloria Anzaldua.
  • His poems and essays have appeared in current and historic feminist and LGBTQ publications. He is co-author, with his life companion and husband Randy P. L. Conner, and their daughter Mariya Ayn Sparks of the "Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit" (Cassells, 1997) and and "Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions" (Routledge, 2003) which were nominated for Lambda Awards in Spirituality.  Sparks also has published many other articles and conference papers on GLBT issues, gender fluidity, the arts and music.
  • David just completed a new chapbook, "Archways and Apparitions," a poetic "autohistoria" that in three sections draws on his life journey from his rural Indiana home, to his  radicalization, and finding eventually his voice at the Pacific's edge in San Francisco's leftist LGBTQ artist's community, and his recent "prodigal son's" return to the ancestral ghosts of the Midwest.
  • He has also just completed a collection of interrelated semi-autobiographic story stories, "Surrealistic Escapades: Three Queer Magical Tales."
  • He is currently finishing a spiritual memoir entitled, "Fay Fathering, Persephone, and a Pair of Ruby Slippers: the Mythic Journey of a Queer Family."

Publications & Prizes

Creative Nonfiction

Anthologies:
First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far) (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007)
,
This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (Routledge, 2002)

Poetry

Anthologies:
Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books, 2017)
,
El Mundo Zurdo 5 (Spinsters/Aunt Lute Press, 2016)
,
Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzalduan Borderlands (Spinsters/Aunt Lute Press, 2016)
,
She is Everywhere! Vol. 3: An Anthology of Writings in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality (iUniverse, Inc., 2012)
Prizes won: 
  • 1998 -- 10th Annual Lambda Literary Award Nominee for for "Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit" edited by Randy P. Conner  and David Hatfield Sparks (Cassell: London)
  • 2005 -- 17th Annual Lambda Literary Award Nominee for "Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions" by Randy Conner and David Hatfield Sparks (Harrington Park Press)
  • His book of selected poems, "Princes and Pumpkins" (Xlibris, 2013) was awarded 1st Prize for the 2016 Writer's Digest Ebook poetry contest.
  • In 2019 he was awarded a writer’s residency in New Orleans by the “Good Judy Foundation, My Judy Residency” program in honor of the lesbian writer Judy Grahn.
  • He was a semi-finalist in the 2019 Saints and Sinners Fiction Contest for short story, "A Little Death in Naples."

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
LGBTQ
Prefers to work with: 
Adults
Fluent in: 
English
Raised in: 
IN
Indiana
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: May 11, 2021