David Martin Anderson is a Hawaiian-born, Iowa-bred writer living in the Texas Hill Country. In 2023, he became the oldest applicant ever accepted into the University of Iowa’s Creative Writing Program, from which he graduated the same year.
After decades devoted primarily to long-form fiction, Anderson turned his focus to short prose in mid-2023. Since that shift, his short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in more than two dozen literary journals and have received recognition from national and international prizes, including the Faulkner-Wisdom Literary Awards, the Bridport Prize, the Oak Park Hemingway Short Fiction Contest, and the Sunspot Solstice Prize. His work has also received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Earlier in his career, Anderson authored more than ten novels and novellas. Amazon has recognized his novel The Last Good Horse as one of the twenty greatest horse stories ever written, and his novella The Cowboys of Haddington Moor was optioned for film adaptation.

Writer’s Statement-I write toward the places where memory and imagination collide—moments when ordinary lives turn luminous under pressure. My work seeks the emotional hinge in a story: the quiet decision or buried truth that reveals who we are and who we might have been.
I am drawn to characters who live at the margins of certainty—the wounded, the stubbornly hopeful, the morally conflicted—those who keep going even when the world is indifferent to their survival. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, I aim to honor the dignity of lived experience, attending less to polished surfaces than to the underlying fractures where story, memory, and desire generate heat.
Writing, for me, is an act of witness and revision: of the self, of history, and of the stories we inherit or refuse. Each piece returns to the same question in a different form: What do we owe one another—and what does forgiveness, or the lack of it, make of a life?

Pen Names-Anderson publishes under several names, each corresponding to a distinct body of work. David Martin Anderson is used for novels and long-form fiction. DM Anderson appears in short fiction submitted to literary journals and contests. Kai Moku-Jones is reserved for hybrid and experimental prose, while Tinker Babbs is used for intimate, character-driven stories where narrative voice is central.
All work is written by the same author.

Contact-For inquiries regarding representation, publication, or rights:
authordavidmartinanderson [at] gmail [dot] com