About David Harlen Brooks

Storyteller

My Story

If you arrived here looking for politics and commentary, sorry. This is not the David Brooks of the New York Times Op-Ed page (though they share the same year of birth, graduation dates, and a major in History). David Harlen Brooks is an inspirational and fiction writer.

Besides fiction and inspirational writing, David writes for a  Christian non-government organization in the Philippines involved in transformational development. He also produces a quarterly newsletter, lays out booklets, and leads a volunteer team to promote the organization’s mission and vision.

Background

David grew up in the Midwest along the muddy Mississippi River. His fondest memories include swimming at a local pool and rollerskating on Saturdays with his big brother and father and water skiing on Sunday afternoons with friends. Family trips to California, Colorado, and Tennessee rank high on the list, too! Most of the time, the family stomped around the Missouri Ozarks.

Reading didn’t come easy for David, originally. The threat of summer school eventually hooked him on the Hardy Boys books and the Sugar Creek Gang series. Their adventures fueled his own desire to write stories.

But David credits the movie industry for channeling his ambitions toward character-driven fiction. The 1980’s movie, Ordinary People, portrays a family reeling in the aftermath of a son’s death from a boating accident. Storytelling, if done well, peels back layer by layer, the human tissue hiding the drama playing out in a character’s heart and mind.

Being on a student budget, David decided to use words instead of a movie camera to reveal the human heart. A literature professor taught him to see how stories reflect an author’s worldview and that many great writers of the past wove religious themes into their plots, themes, and symbols.

So, with pen and paper, David filled notebooks with snatches of scenes, dialogue, and character descriptions. But he had no idea how those scraps could fit together into a coherent story until years later.

Professional Development

In the meantime, David earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a  double major in English and History. Then took up a Bachelor of Journalism with an emphasis on magazines.

David covered school board and city council meetings after graduation as a stringer for a weekly suburban paper west of Chicago. Then God sprinkled a diverse group of people in his life, which connected him to his job in the Philippines.

In 1996, he joined a one-month fellowship at the Silliman University’s National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental, Philippines. He says the fellows listened as each others’ short stories were ripped apart by the panelists. The learning experience helped David to continue working on those stories and add more over the years.

Although David has lived in the Philippines longer than his native U.S., most of his fictional stories are based in the U.S. heartland. His non-fiction articles have appeared in:

The Lookout Magazine — http://www.lookoutmag.com/a-good-read-for-the-journey/

Evangel — A Father Lost, A Father Gained and Untouched by Human Hands.

Finally, and more importantly, David met his wife in the Philippines. When David isn’t working, they enjoy traveling.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact David Harlen Brooks through his contact page.