“So many of the things I talk about in 'Reality Hunger' seem to be the things that 'The Thing About Life' does - things like risk, contradiction, compression, mixing modes of attack from the memoristic gesture to data-crunching.”

American author

David Shields is an American author of 25 books. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, and criticism, and he is known for books such as Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, and Black Planet. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, twice an NEA Fellow, and a winner of the PEN Revson Award. He has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the PEN West Award, and has served as senior contributing editor of Conjunctions.