New story collection, Beast Vocal, published by Wolsak and Wynn in spring 2027.
David JamesBrock
Choose Your Own Adventure
Four forms, one body of work. Begin with the page, the voice, the stage, or the screen.
Animated feature
The Christmas Witch Trial of La Befana
Co-written by David James Brock and Melissa D’Agostino. Starring Anjelica Huston.
Ten-HeadedAlien
Meet the bookTen-Headed Alien documents the struggle for coherence and connection in the moments where spasm meets dance, where nightmare bleeds into vision, where we encounter the monster of our history and where the fertile ruins of the present are surveyed from the ruins of the future.
— Daniel Scott Tysdal, author of Fauxccasional Poems
“There’s a tingle of glee in the details of humanity's demise, and a pull to question our complicity in the ruin of the world. Ten-Headed Alien contains poems of unease, and of familiarity, and in them we are all a little monstrous.”
— Dina del Bucchia, author of Don’t Tell Me What to Do
Books
Poetry · 2018
Ten-Headed Alien
A collection of poems about monsters, myths, climate, bodies, and the strange machinery of being alive.
Poetry · 2014
Everyone is CO₂
Private mythologies drawn from space exploration, heavy metal, television, and the epic of Gilgamesh.
Play–opera · 2019
a million billion pieces
A tender, restless work about teenage intimacy, time, connection, and what it means to be alive.
Year ofthe Horse
Four-act rock opera / Fucked Up
“This ‘song’ is a meditation… it is the wild fire and demonic braying of Cormac McCarthy, especially of Blood Meridian and Outer Darkness, the pursuit of pitch black cowboys which seem plucked from the pure bowels of hell, sliding like oil and shadow across the sands in pursuit of the white horse, a chase toward Golgotha and Gethsemane where at last the vicious satanic devouring jaw might sink into the blood-rich flesh of heaven’s child.”Listen / buy on Bandcamp
As a librettist
Visual song cycle · Navona Records · 2025
Gilgamesh
Written in eleven poetic “tablets,” David’s libretto reimagines the ancient Mesopotamian epic as a contemporary song cycle about power, friendship, grief, mortality, and the longing to outlast death.
Music by J. Scott Brubacher, with baritone Stephen Lancaster, pianist Susan McDaniel, and dancer-choreographer Kyle Marshall. The visual album brings poetry, music, dance, and film together in one performance.
Explore the albumWriting onthe Internet
Stories, poems, plays, and other writing.
Fiction
Big Goose
The Ampersand Review / 2026
02Short fiction
Kisser
Fantasy Magazine — now Psychopomp / 2021
03Writing
THE YEAR I QUIT BASEBALL
04Play / opera
a million billion pieces
Playwrights Canada Press / 2019
05Essay
A Very Personal Reading List for Newer Playwrights
David James Brock / 2016
06Interview
On Teaching Creative Writing
University of Guelph / 2017
07Poetry
Bionic Pigeon Wing on the Roadside
Open Book / 2017
Writer and
collaborator.
David James Brock is a Canadian screenwriter, playwright, poet, and opera librettist whose work moves between forms and finds new life through collaboration.
Read the full biography ↗- Based
- Toronto, Canada
- Books
- Everyone is CO₂
Ten-Headed Alien - Teaching
- Creative & Professional Writing
Humber Polytechnic
Let’s talk.
For commissions, collaborations, speaking, press, rights, or a general hello.