In terms of background, Dave is a North Catholic and La Salle University graduate who grew up in Kensington.  He now works as an editor in medical publishing at the American Association for Cancer Research near Independence Hall and is a nationally recognized poet.  His wife, Michele, is a Little Flower graduate. Dave's book Shackamaxon (the Lenni Lenape name for what we think of as Kensington and Port Richmond) derives much of its inspiration from those aforementioned neighborhoods. I have been having my sophomores read Dave's poems in part because I want them to realize that art can be made from their own neighborhoods and lives.

Dave has published two volumes of poetry and has appeared in The Hudson Review, Threepenny Review, New Criterion, Sewanee Review, Yale Review, The Schuylkill Valley Journal and other nationally known literary journals. For a few years he was also one of the editors of Janus, a Philadelphia area literary journal that published major poets and writers.

Here is a link to a podcast called Everything Bagel which has an interview with Dave. It is an hour or so long.