Originally from south Georgia, David Lawrence Morse studied in Russia after the collapse of communism, cleaned toilets in Yosemite, and taught English then lived on a rice farm in the foothills of Yamaguchi, Japan, before earning an MFA at the University of Michigan. He is now the director of the writing program at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale.
His work has appeared in The Washington Post, One Story, Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. His first play, Quartet, was performed by the Takács Quartet and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.