David Giffels is the author of five books, and two-time winner of the Ohioana Book Award. His critically acclaimed memoir, Furnishing Eternity: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and a Measure of Life, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "tender, witty and . . . painstakingly and subtly wrought," and picked as a New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice. His previous books include The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt, also a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and nominee for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the memoir All the Way Home (William Morrow/HarperCollins).

Giffels is the coauthor, with Jade Dellinger, of the rock biography Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! and, with Steve Love, Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron. A former columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal, Giffels's writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine,the Atlantic, Parade, the Iowa Review, the Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Grantland, and many other publications. He also was a writer for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where he teaches creative nonfiction in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program.