David Carlin is a writer and creative artist of Scottish and English heritage, living in Bulleke-Bek/Brunswick on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.

He has published eight books, including sole and collaboratively authored works and edited anthologies. His essays have been published in journals and magazines including Overland, Meanjin, Griffith REVIEW, Hunger Mountain, Speak, Essay Daily, Westerly, Sydney Review of Books, and Speculative Nonfiction. He has won awards including the Patricia Hackett Prize, four Gold and Silver Awards from the New York Radio Festival, and Runner-Up in the Hunger Mountain Creative NonfictionPrize.

David is Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, where he co-founded the non/fictionLab and WrICE. He is also Co-President of the NonfictioNOW Conference, and a founding Contributing Editor of the journal, Speculative Nonfiction. He has won two Australian Research Council grants, for the Circus Oz Living Archive and WrICE.

His research interests include essaying and hybrid forms, ecocriticism and the Anthropocene, community digital archives, memory, collaborative methods and creative practice, and the ethics of intercultural exchange in the Asia-Pacific region.

Prior to undertaking his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne, and joining the faculty of RMIT in 2006, David worked for 20 years in film and theatre as a writer and director, as a co-founder of the Red Shed Theatre Company (Adelaide), Artistic Director of Arena Theatre (Melbourne), co-director of Cracker Night Films, Show Director of Circus Oz and freelancer for SBS Television, Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, and Melbourne Workers Theatre.