David Barr Kirtley is the host of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast on Wired.com, for which he’s interviewed over 400 guests, including Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Margaret Atwood, Richard Dawkins, Simon Pegg, Bill Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ursula K. Le Guin. His interviews have been reprinted in books such as Conversations with William Gibson, Conversations with Michael Chabon, and Conversations with Nalo Hopkinson.
His short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, and Intergalactic Medicine Show, on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and in books such as New Voices in Science Fiction, The Living Dead, New Cthulhu, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. In 2022 a Japanese translation of his story “Power Armor: A Love Story” was a finalist for the Seiun Award.
His book Save Me Plz and Other Stories collects 20 of his best short stories, along with 13 illustrations and more than 40 pages of author’s notes explaining how the stories came to be written. Publishers Weekly says, “Visceral settings and robust characters will have readers marveling at how much Kirtley is able to fit into a limited page count. For SFF fans with no time to sink into a doorstopper, these concentrated doses of genre goodness will hit the spot,” and Kirkus Reviews writes, “Kirtley employs sharp, concise prose that complements his puckish sense of humor. … The author’s passionate voice breathes life into this wonderful array of tales.”
David is the son of Buckley prize-winning physicist John R. Kirtley. He majored in Government at Colby College and holds a degree in fiction and screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He lives in Austin with his cat Oryx and his wife Steph Grossman.
View David’s full biography and full bibliography, and check out interviews with him on Into the Impossible, Sci-Fi with Jesse Mercury, and The Vocal Minority Report.
Save Me Plz and Other Stories is available now on Amazon.com. It contains the following stories: “Beauty,” “The Black Bird,” “Seven Brothers, Cruel,” “Blood of Virgins,” “Seeds-for-Brains,” “Family Tree,” “Red Road,” “Save Me Plz,” “The Ontological Factor,” “The Second Rat,” “They Go Bump,” “The Prize,” “Cats in Victory,” “Transformations,” “Power Armor: A Love Story,” “Veil of Ignorance,” “Three Deaths,” “The Disciple,” “The Skull-Faced Boy,” and “The Skull-Faced City.”
