David Adam Galef (born March 27, 1959) is an American fiction writer, critic, poet, translator, and essayist.
Born in the Bronx, he grew up in Scarsdale. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1981, after which he lived in Osaka, Japan, for a year. He received an M.A. in English from Columbia University in 1984, and a Ph.D. in literature in 1989. In 1992, he married Beth Weinhouse. From 1989 to 2008, he was a professor of English at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where he administered the M.F.A. program in creative writing until 2007. David Galef and his family currently live in Montclair, where he is a professor at Montclair State University.
Galef has published thirteen books. In addition, he has written over seventy short stories for magazines ranging from the British Punch to the Czech Prague Revue, the Canadian Prism International and the American Shenandoah. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Village Voice, Twentieth Century Literature, The Columbia History of the British Novel and others. His awards include a Henfield Foundation grant, a Writers Exchange award from Poets & Writers, and a Mississippi Arts Council grant, as well as residencies at Yaddo and Ragdale.
Even Monkeys Fall from Trees: The Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs. Illus. Jun Hashimoto. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000. Rpt. of Even Monkeys Fall from Trees, and Other Japanese Proverbs. 1987.
Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk: More Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs. Illus. Jun Hashimoto. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000.
Criticism
Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. [Editor and contributor.]
The Supporting Cast: A Study of Flat and Minor Characters. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
Anthology
20 over 40. Jackson, MS: The University Press of Mississippi, 2006. [Co-editor with Beth Weinhouse.]
Edition
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005. [Editor.]