David Meyer

David Meyer's chapbook Chronicle of an Obsession: Love, Death, and the Prostate, appeared in June 2025, from Finishing Line Press.  Meyer has recently completed two other chapbooks, plus the book-length narrative The Lotus War: Never In-country, about evading the Vietnam War and the long-term consequences of that evasion.  He is currently working on a book of poems about the outdoors and one's place in it tentatively titled The Man In Love With Silence, and a play called The Pleasure Bargain set in a WW II concentration camp brothel. 

Though an Iowa native, Meyer has lived most of his life in Chicago.  In the ’60s he entered seminary to evade the Vietnam War, thereby diverting himself from his true vocation as a poet and playwright.  He eventually pursued book publishing, even founding a liberal theological publishing house (yes, there is such a thing).  He is grateful that, when the publishing house went under, his wife Pat had a good job teaching English, so Dave lost neither her nor their house (both uncertain for a time).  Since retiring from book publishing, Dave has focused on poetry and playwriting, progressive politics, citizens' diplomacy, fly-fishing, and Pat.  Always Pat.

Education: B.A. (Theatre), M.A. (creative writing/ drama and poetry), University of Northern Iowa; M.Div., Garrett Theological Seminary [Northwestern University]; M.A. Theological Studies, Meadville Theological School [University of Chicago]; M.F.A., Writing (poetry), Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Meyer has published over 100 poems, a few essays, and one play.  His chapbook Congregation of the Damned: a Chapbook of Evasion (excerpted from The Lotus War) received a 'high commendation' in The Munster Literature Centre's "Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Award."  His poem "Apologia pro Poemate Meo" also received a 'commendation' from The Munster Literature Centre's O'Donaghue International Prize; his poem "The Blessing Way" won the Ruth Cable Prize from ELF: the Eclectic Literary Forum. 

In addition to publications, Meyer has had a play produced at the University of Northern Iowa, another given a table reading at Writers' Theatre Chicago, and a third given a staged reading at Circle Theatre, Chicago. 

In the ’90s, Meyer was first a reader, then on the four-person editorial board for the late, lamented River Oak Review.