David Langstaff
David Langstaff is a writer, educator, and activist living in Philadelphia. He is interested in the sometimes generative, sometimes fractious tension between politics and poetics, or in poetry as a conceptual placeholder for social/aesthetic practices that precede, exceed, and fundamentally trouble the onto-epistemological rubric of the political.
David previously taught at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he completed his MA in English with an emphasis on creative writing. His poetry, scholarship, and political commentary have been published in Interface, WSQ, The Wayne Literary Review, Abolition, Counterpunch, The Palestine Chronicle. From 2016-2017 he was the Program Manager for the disability justice movement-building and performance project, Sins Invalid.
Having spent the better part of the past decade principally focused on various forms of political activism and community organizing – from eviction defense to prison abolition to disability justice – he is presently devoting himself to writing and teaching. David is currently adjunct faculty and the MFA Coordinator for the School of Dance at the University of the Arts.