David Alpaugh Biography

David Alpaugh was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1941. He studied literature at Rutgers University and the University of California, Berkeley where he was a Woodrow Wilson and a Ford Foundation fellow. After 20 years in public relations and advertising he founded Small Poetry Press, a book design and printing service for self-publishing poets. He produced more then a thousand chapbooks and full collections for poets nationwide before retiring in 2008.

Alpaugh began writing poetry in 1989 and his first full collection won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press. His poems and essays have appeared in over one hundred literary journals, including Able Muse, Chronicle of Higher Education, Exquisite Corpse, Evergreen Review, The Formalist, Light, Mudlark, Poetry, Poets & Writers, Rattle, Scene4, Wisconsin Review, Your Daily Poem, and Zyzzyva.

Alpaugh is one of the 100 poets included in the anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present and he has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California. He is the Publications director for The Ina Coolbrith Circle and a lifetime member of The California Writers Club. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he hosted monthly poetry readings at different venues for 15 years.