As a playwright known for his imaginative blending of humor, humanity and heart, David Templeton frequently works in the genres of fantasy, science-fiction and horror. His plays include the award-winning ‘Galatea,’ ‘Drumming With Anubis,’ ‘Mary Shelley’s Body,’ ‘Polar Bears,’ ‘Pinky,’ ‘Wretch Like Me’ and the upcoming ‘Featherbaby.’ His fiction has appeared in dozens of books, magazines and newspapers. An annual series of twisted Christmas tales ran in the North Bay Bohemian for over a decade. His romantic-horror novella ‘Mary Shelley’s Body’ was published in 2016 in the anthology ‘Eternal Frankenstein.’

Among Templeton’s many playwriting awards are the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Citation, which he won in 2022 for ‘Galatea.’ The drama also received a Will Glickman New Play honorable mention, and won in seven categories (including for Original Script and Best Production in the Bay Area) at the 2022 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Excellence in Theatre Awards.

‘Wretch Like Me,’ Templeton’s first solo show, has been performed over 100 times, with runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the San Francisco Fringe Festival and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, with additional performances at The Marsh, Cinnabar Theater, Santa Rosa Junior College, Napa Valley College, Napa Theater Company and others.

As a journalist with a reputation for compelling storytelling, Templeton has written for dozens of publications in the Bay Area and nationwide, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pacific Sun, Strings Magazine, Marin Magazine, the Press Democrat, the North Bay Bohemian and the Petaluma Argus-Courier, where he currently serves as Community Editor. In 2019, he won the California Newspaper Publishers Association award for best writing for his piece ‘Flying Off to Neverland.’ For the North Bay Bohemian, he was the senior theater critic for 16 years, during which he say over 1200 plays.

David was born in Southern California. The first play he ever saw on stage was James Baldwin’s ‘Blues for Mister Charlie,’ in Los Angeles in 1968. As a child, he became interested in puppetry, forming his own travelling puppet troupe at age 16. After graduating, and segueing into writing and directing full-length plays, he put his theatrical efforts on hold while pursuing a career in newspapers and journalism. While occasionally taking roles in community theater productions, his lifelong love of theater was primarily expressed through his theater reviews and arts journalism. In 2009, he was persuaded by friends to write and perform an autobiographical solo show he’d long been talking about. That was ‘Wretch Like Me,’ and having thus reclaimed his love of writing for the stage, Templeton has since written eight additional plays. He is currently working on his tenth, along with a screenplay adaptation of ‘Galatea,’ a collection of plays to be titled ‘Monsters, Gods and Robots,’ and a memoir expanded from his play ‘Polar Bears.’