David-Matthew Barnes is the award-winning author of fifteen novels, three collections of poetry, seven short stories, and more than seventy stage plays that have been performed in three languages in twelve countries. He writes in multiple genres, primarily young adult, romance, thriller, and horror. Five of his stage plays have received off-off Broadway productions.
As a film producer, David-Matthew has helped bring fifty independent, horror, and international films to the screen including the Hungarian thriller Haunting Trophies, the new horror classic Wolf Howl, and the documentary series Faces of Africa.
To date, he has written eight produced screenplays, including the award-winning supernatural horror film Baby Cindy, the coming-of-age indie drama Frozen Stars, the award-winning Dutch queer youth film Wagon, and the suburban soccer mom satire The Snack Queens.
His scripts have placed in Final Draft's Big Break, the ISA Fast Track Fellowship, the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, the ScreenCraft Feature Competition, the Scriptation Showcase, The Short List at Barnstorm Fest, and the WeScreenplay Shorts Contest.
David-Matthew's screenplays have been recognized at film festivals around the word, including winning top awards at the Oz Indie Film Festival (Australia), the Hamburg Film Awards (Germany), the New Renaissance Film Festival (Amsterdam), the Prisma Independent Film Awards (Rome), and the New Wave Short Film Festival (Munich). He is the recipient of three Los Angeles Film Awards, the Luis Buñuel Memorial Award for Best Short Script, and a Stanley Film Award for Best American Writer. He was named the Grand Prize Jury Winner at Film Invasion L.A. for his dramatic screenplay Made From Scratch.
His literary work has appeared in over one hundred publications including The Best Stage Scenes, The Best Women's Stage Monologues, The Best Men's Stage Monologues, The Best 10-Minute Plays, and 105 Five-Minute Plays for Study and Performance.
David-Matthew is the winner of the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Award, the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award for playwriting, the Slam Boston Award for Best Play, and two Elly Awards for playwriting from the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance. He was named a finalist for the Billy Roche International Short Play Award for his dramatic play Shallow End, which explores the impact of sexual assault on the lives of two high school students. Two of his young adult novels, Fifty Yards and Holding and Wonder Land, were named finalists for the Rainbow Book List by the American Library Association.
David-Matthew has been selected for three Sundance Collab screenwriting workshops. He was named a finalist for the Sundance Institute YouTube New Voices Lab. He was nationally selected to serve as the Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Pennsylvania State University.
David-Matthew graduated with honors from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and English. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He is a graduate of the Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA. He has been an arts educator for nearly twenty years.
David-Matthew is a member of the Author's Guild, the Dramatists Guild, International Thriller Writers, the National Writers Union, and the Romance Writers of America.
He lives in Sacramento, California.
