Dave Smith is a construct
D.A. Smith
Born 1979. Since then, Virginia ('79-'85), Italy ('85-'87), Virginia ('87-'89), Florida('89-'91), Texas
('91-'94), Venezuela ('94-'97), Virginia ('97-'98), Texas ('98-present).
Education: various American elementary/junior high/high schools, including overseas varieties; H.S. diploma, Colegio
Internacional de Caracas, Venezuela, 1997; B.A., English/Creative Writing, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas,
2001; B.A., Chinese Studies, University of Houston, 2012.
Work history: Fuck work. I've worked in retail, advertising and legal proofreading, and for the City of Houston's Parks and Recreation
Department. These days, I'm focused on writing and translating.
Interests include writing (see below), translation, science fiction, history, "literature," poetry, lit crit,
Buddhism, leftist politics, pulp fiction, heavy metal, role-playing games,
David Lynch, Chinese and Portuguese language/culture/history, solitude, meditation, suburbia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, philosophy,
nerdcore
hip-hop, video games, drooling over Dana Scully, coffee, writing bare-bones HTML, weirdness high and low, etc. etc.
In 2003 Invisible College Press published a novel of mine, Axis Mundi
Sum. I've always been simultaneously proud and deprecatory of it. It's not bad for a first effort, though it's no
masterpiece. It's out of print and the publisher is out of business, so that link above is dead. If you want an e-book version, email
me.
In 2017 Goa 1556 published two of my books. Well, one of them is Orlando da Costa's book O Signo da Ira, which I translated as The Sign of Wrath.
The other book, alas, has no link at the moment, but it's called Avante, Goeses, Avante!: The Portuguese Poetry of Laxmanrao
Sardessai. In it I collected and translated the Portuguese-language poetry of the Goan Hindu writer Laxmanrao Sardessai, and
wrote a brief introductory essay as well.
In December 2018 Goa 1556 published my translation of Leonor Figueiredo's Sita Valles: Revolucionária, Comunista até à Morte,
entitled Sita Valles: A Revolutionary Until Death. It's on Amazon. I'm pretty proud of it.
I'm just old enough to remember the tail end of a lot of things that have come to define my generation and those that
are following it. My first encounter with the Internet came via the Prodigy BBS in 1991 at a friend's house. I grew
up on Sierra adventure games, early 2nd Edition AD&D, cassette tapes, and MTV when it was still highly relevant. I
missed a lot of stuff, obviously, but I consider myself fortunate to have come of age in an interstitial period, though everything
feels like it's in-between these days.
As of May 2011, I'm a married man.
Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch, you can email me at dasmith at freeshell dot org.
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