Hey, my name is Dain.

I’ve wanted to be a storyteller forever.

The writer part came later, after a weird and terrifying stint as a middle school musical chorus member, amongst other things, but the need to create stories was always there. I was born outside of Seattle in the just-barely-90’s and raised in south New Jersey, down where city turns into soybean fields which turn into pine barrens which turn into the shores of the Atlantic. I took a field trip to a cranberry bog once, and that was a different kind of ocean.

I studied English literature and language in the Shenandoah Valley and loved every minute, spent time in southern California and Utah, and then landed here in Chicago, a city I’ve called home for nearly two years (and counting). I met my soulmate—my cat Zora Neale Hurston—at an animal shelter just a few months after moving here, and we’ve been together ever since.

Community is incredibly important to me, and I do everything I can to support, give voice to, and recognize the communities around me, especially those of marginalized people. I’m queer and non-binary, so the queer community is particularly dear. I write a little bit of everything, from personal nonfictive to speculative fiction, science fiction and fantasy (SFF), thrillers, magical realism, young and new adult fiction, and even, on occasion, a poem or two. You can find me writing at a bar near my house, attending a fiction open mic or a queer event, or taking a walk in the rain, trying to remember how grateful I am to be here and to find more stories to tell.

21 July 2019.

Boring stuff

• Bachelor of Arts (English), Southern Virginia University, 2013

• Master of Arts (Humanities), University of Chicago, 2018

• my cat thinks I’m great