David Barr Kirtley's short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and On Spec, and in various anthologies, including New Voices in Science Fiction. His young adult fiction appears in magazines such as Cicada, READ, and Merlyn's Pen. Locus magazine has called his work "wildly inventive," and reviewer Rich Horton called his story "The Second Rat" "one of the best stories of the year." A screenplay adaptation he wrote of his story "Lest We Forget" was shot as a short film by his cousin Brian Barr. The film was shown as part of the 2002 New York Independent Film and Video Festival in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. His work is often used in school and college classrooms, and one of his stories was performed as part of a talent show at the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium in Germany. In 1997, he won the Isaac Asimov Award for undergraduate science fiction, given by Asimov's magazine. He has also appeared twice as a guest instructor at the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers. He grew up in Katonah, New York and graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he majored in Government, with a minor in Creative Writing. He is also a graduate of various writers workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, James Gunn's Writers Workshop, Orson Scott Card's Writers Bootcamp, and Viable Paradise. He is the son of Buckley prize-winning physicist John R. Kirtley. He lives in the New York area.