David B. Prather’s collections of poetry include We Were Birds from Main Street Rag in 2019 and Shouting at an Empty House from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2023.  He has another full-length poetry collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2024. A past president of West Virginia Writers, Inc., a statewide non-profit organization, he taught English Composition, American Literature, and Creative Writing at West Virginia University at Parkersburg and English Comp at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. Prather also served as poetry editor for Confluence Literary Journal and for Tantra Press, and he hosted the Blennerhassett Reading Series. He currently serves as a reader for Suburbia Journal. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Seneca Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Journal of Poetry, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, and others, as well as having garnered nominations for both Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes.  His work has also appeared in many anthologies, including Voices From the Fierce Intangible World (from South Florida Poetry Journal) and Endlessly Rocking: Poems in Honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th Birthday (Unbound Content, Englewood, NJ). Prather studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York, and he appeared in a couple of local (West Virginia/Ohio) independent movies. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and he was recently included in the West Virginia Literary Hall of Recognition. He lives in the town where he was born—Parkersburg, West Virginia.

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