David-Matthew Barnes

David-Matthew Barnes writes fiction and drama across teen, romance, mystery, and literary forms. Wonderland, Swimming to Chicago, and Fifty Yards and Holding show the range of his book catalogue, while his extensive work for the stage gives his prose a strong interest in dialogue and performance. Swimming to Chicago is a teen novel published by Bold Strokes Books in 2011. It follows Alex Bainbridge, Jillian Dambro, and Robby LaMont as friendship, family disruption, grief, and the wish to leave rural Georgia bind their lives together. Kirkus identified it as Barnes’s second novel for teens, and the edition record places it for readers thirteen and older. Barnes has also written poetry, short fiction, and many plays produced in several countries and languages. Read beside Wonderland and the sports-inflected title Fifty Yards and Holding, Swimming to Chicago anchors his fiction in characters negotiating identity, loyalty, and the difficult passage from adolescence toward independent choices.