David Knowles is the author of the novels: The Secrets of the Camera Obscura (Chronicle Books), and The Third Eye (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday). His short stories have been published in in Nerve, The Baffler, and St. Anne's Review, and his articles have appeared in Travel + Leisure, USA Today, Men's Vogue, New York Newsday, and Vainty Fair Italy, among others. His work has been translated into five languages, and he has given reading tours of the United States and Europe. For five years he served as the Executive Director of Ledig House International Writers' Colony in upstate New York. He has taught numerous fiction workshops at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in Manhattan, and now runs the Beaches Fiction Workshop in Atlantic Beach, Florida. In addition, he is an editor and contributor to  Political Machine, an AOL blog on politics. He is currently working on a new novel, a screenplay, and is learning to surf.

Since the mid-eighties, David has played in a number of bands, most notably, San Fransisco's Black Swans, the New York septet Champale, and his own instrumental group, Anchor Tattoo. His music has appeared in the films, "So I Married An Axe Murderer,"in which he also makes a cameo, "The Watershed," and "Revolution '67."