David Berner
David W. Berner is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, author, and teacher. His first book, Accidental Lessons was awarded the 2011 Royal Dragonfly Grand Prize for Literature. His broadcast reporting and audio documentaries have been aired on the CBS Radio Network, NPR’s Weekend Edition and a number of public radio stations across America. David has been the recipient of awards from the Associated Press, RTNDA
(Radio and Television News Directors Association) and the Broadcast Education Association.
David’s writing, both reporting and personal essays, have appeared in publications and online journals such as PERIGEE, Tiny Lights Journal, Shaking Like a Mountain, Travelgolf.com, Worldgolf.com, Golf Chicago Magazine, The Sun Newspapers, and Write City Magazine. Earlier this year, he was awarded the position of Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project in Orlando, Florida for the summer of 2011.
David is also a performer. He’s a regular on the Chicago storytelling circuit, reading his personal essays at events such as Story Club, Essay Fiesta, and This Much is True. As an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, he teaches radio narrative, audio documentary, and writing. He has presented writing workshops at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and for numerous literary organizations throughout the Chicago area.
David holds a Masters in Education/Teaching from the Aurora University and a MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University.Ghost Boxing
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011This is a piece of a larger project David will be working on as this summer’s Writer-in-Residence.
When Dad was a teenager, he and his buddies used to beat the crap out of each other every weekend inside a makeshift boxing ring in the basement of his boyhood home. Using his mother’s ball of clothesline, Dad roped off a square section of the cracked and uneven concrete floor. He put old wooden folding chairs in two of the four corners, drew a big X in the middle of the square with white chalk, and laced-up a pair of black leather boxing gloves. Three neighborhood buddies would take turns pummeling each other until their bare-chested bodies glistened with sweat. There was rarely …
The Ukulele
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011My father was a music man. Not because he could play an instrument with virtuosity, but because he simply loved music. He found pure joy in the sounds. Delight would spring from him when he heard his favorites. It was not the kind of pleasure a man experiences when he listens to an opera and permits a soaring aria to bring him to tears, and it was not the thrill a skilled pianist might experience when he strikes the notes in the tender melody of a Beethoven piano sonata. For Dad, the emotions came less from the heart of a cultured man and more from the gut of a workingman. He’d cry when he’d hear the heartbreaking melody of a …
