David Giffels is an author and journalist from Akron, Ohio, whose most recent book, All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-down House, has received widespread acclaim, from the New York Times, which described it as “sweet and funny” to the Los Angeles Times, which called it “a truly wonderful book” to Oprah’s O at Home magazine, where it topped the “Fantastic Summer Reads” list. The memoir, about his coming of age as a father in a ramshackle mansion, is published by William Morrow/
HarperCollins.
Giffels, a longtime Akron Beacon Journal columnist and former writer for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head, has recently joined the creative writing faculty at the University of Akron, where he will begin teaching in fall 2009.
Giffels is the co-author of two other books: the rock biography Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! (SAF Publishing, 2003), and Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron, a 1998 history of his hometown that is the best-selling title in University of Akron Press history.
His essays appear in The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), The Appalachians: America’s First and Last Frontier (Random House, 2004) and as the introduction to the West Point Market Cookbook (University of Akron Press, 2008). His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Redbook, This Old House Magazine and many other publications.
He is a contributing commentator and essayist on National Public Radio station WKSU. In an 18-year journalism career, he has received dozens of awards, including the 2006 national award for commentary from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and a 2008 general excellence award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. In 2009, he was honored as Best News Writer in Ohio by the Associated Press. He has been nominated six times for the Pulitzer Prize.
Giffels has bachelor’s degrees in English and mass media and a master’s degree in English/creative writing from the University of Akron. He writes in the former servant’s quarters of a semi-rehabilitated Tudor Revival home in Akron, where he lives with his wife, two children, and a large but uncounted number of bats.