Publications
“We climbed over the rusted bones of automobiles long dead. Fords. Lincolns. Cadillacs. American cars because that’s what my grandfather trafficked in. Still believing, as so many did…” Click here to read more.
- 805 Lit + Art, 2023 |
“Today I met an Italian kid who had never seen snow. / He was sixteen or seventeen, this kid, / and the look on his face, it was: bliss…” Click here to read more.
- Deep Water Poetry Series: Portland Press Herald, 2022 |
Regular publications covering beer and spirits in Maine Magazine. Click here to read more.
- Maine Magazine, Contributing writer 2020-2022 |
“My earliest memories of home are from the trailer park in northern Vermont where we lived until I was 5. These are hazy recollections: green carpet, ratty brown couch…” Click here to read more.
- Decor Maine, 2020 |
“When my face presses into the parking lot asphalt the chanting begins. It starts as a few hushed voices, then builds quickly, like brushfire, to a chorus of over a hundred…” Click here to read more.
— Portland Press Herald, 2020 |
“When I was a kid, my family suffered two tragedies that planted us firmly in America’s lower middle class: my father lost his job…” Click here to read more.
— Salon, 2019 |
“On Sunday nights I get brutally sad. Forlorn might be a more precise word for what I feel when my wife and I finally get the kids to bed…” Click here to read more.
— Literary Mama, 2018 |
Published over 200 articles on local beer, spirits, and food in the Portland Press Herald, MaineToday, and The Maine Sunday Telegram. Click here to read more.
— Portland Press Herald, 2014-2018 |
“The first time MJ sees the plane he’s gone. Runs a straight shot away from me to the field where the trail opens up. Scares the shit out of me, because the only time…” Click here to read more.
— Slice Literary Magazine, 201 |
“The front door of the bar swung open and a gust of snow blew into the room. Someone yelled, ‘Shut the damn door!’ The guy who walked in used both arms to latch the door…” Click here to read more.
— Blinders Literary Journal, 201 |
“My mother catches me playing with our dead dog when I’m eight. The dog is a mutt. Part Lab, part collie, part everything. She’s black with tufts of white hair on her underbelly and her nose. She’s older…” Click here to read more.
— The Apple Valley Review, 2014 |
“When the rooster was close, Ira stepped forward and again kicked Stalin, this time launching the rooster out of the coop. It ran to the chain-link fence at the edge of the yard and pecked at the ground…” Click here to read more.
— Clare Literary Journal, 2014 |
“She lit a cigarette at the table and smoked a few drags, then ran to the bathroom to be sick. I sat high in the tree in the backyard. Through the bathroom window, I saw her shaking over the toilet. In the kitchen, Silas picked up…” Click here to read more.
— Storyacious, 2014 |
“The photographs start showing up three months after you disappear. Each envelope contains a stack of thirty-six obscure photos, an entire roll of film. Blurry semi trucks on the highway. An oak leaf floating…” Click here to read more.
— Hot Metal Bridge, 2013 |
“My mother bought me the video camera hoping I would produce some of the screenplays I wrote in middle school, but its main use was to shoot Jacob, Ethan, and me fighting in Jacob’s basement. His mother…” Click here to read more.
— Onion River Review, 2013 |
“At fifteen I lunged into the world head first, eyes open. Call it coming of age. Call it whatever you’d like. I was alive in a new way. I tried girls, weed, beer, cliff jumping, getting lost in the woods, staying…” Click here to listen to the entire segment.
— Drunken Odyssey Podcast, 2013 |
“It’s late March 2013 in Maine. The ground outside is blanketed with snow from an unexpected spring snowstorm, and Tyler Gaudet ’07 and Jackson McLeod keep looking outside while they…” Click here to read more.
— St. Michael’s College Magazine, 2014 |
"How We Hunger is a concept album written by Dave Patterson, telling the story of two characters embracing desire in a dying mill town. The love they make is consuming and the price they pay is steep. It's cinema on a country landscape moving from the murder ballad..." Click here to listen.
|
|
ABOUT THE NOVEL: A twelve-year-old boy lives with his family in a small, poverty-stricken town in Vermont. His father works at a manufacturing plant, his mother is a homemaker, and his fifteen-year-old brother is about to enter high school. His family has gained enough financial stability to move out of the nearby trailer park, and as conflict rages abroad, his father’s job at a weapons manufacturing plant appears safe. But then his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and everything changes. Set over the course of one propulsive summer, Soon the Light Will Be Perfect chronicles the journey of two brothers on the cusp of adulthood, a town battered by poverty and a family at a breaking point. In spare, fiercely honest prose, Dave Patterson captures what it feels like to be gloriously, violently alive at a moment of political, social and familial instability. Purchase the novel from Print: A Bookstore, one of Portland, Maine’s premiere independent booksellers. PRAISE FOR THE NOVEL: “Soon The Light Will Be Perfect is so deeply moving because it is so achingly true. You will not soon forget these people, this place.” -Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls “Stunning debut.” –New York Post “Soon the Light will be Perfect is as unexpected and beautiful as a rainbow over a junkyard. It is a pitch-perfect novel. Cinematic and gritty, rugged and fragile, wickedly wry and heartbreakingly sad. This is a book for sinners and saints alike. A glorious mash-up of The Outsiders, David Sedaris, and Andre Dubus. I devoured this wonderful, wonderful debut novel and have become already impatient to read Patterson’s next book.” -Nickolas Butler, internationally bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs and The Hearts of Men “Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is a heartbreaking, gently wrought story about reckonings: with adulthood, faith, love, and death.” –BuzzFeed “Devastating, beautiful, worth it.” –New York Public Library “Patterson’s spare style and his ability to touch on conflicts and tensions without always resolving them makes the novel a beautiful exploration of what it means to come of age in difficult circumstances.” –Portland Press Herald “Dave Patterson’s Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is a striking debut novel from a writer whose eye for the poignancy of childhood and family is second to none. This foray with a young man on the verge of adolescence showcases the unique pressures of class, illness, and faith in small-town Vermont rife with broken dreams and missed opportunities. This is a novel that will seize your heart.” -Michael Nye, author of All the Castles Burned “This is a deceptively simple novel trending deep in the human heart. Patterson makes you want to jump into the story and hug the hell out of his characters.” -Dan McCarthy, Library Director, Searsmont Library, Searsmont, Maine “Dave Patterson delivers a coming-of-age tale thick with the smell of stale cigarette smoke, chemical-sweet fabric softener, cat piss, and polyurethane all lingering in the air of a densely humid New England summer. It’s a story of conflicted Catholic pubescence brought to bear in moments of staggering poetic realism that’ll have you dizzy with anticipation and leave you wanting more.” -Michael Macomber, owner of Elements: Books Coffee Beer, Biddeford, Maine To inquire about a speaking engagement or a media request contact Laura Gianino at Harper Collins: [email protected]. |
About
A graduate of St. Michael’s College, Dave Patterson holds an MA from the Bread Loaf School of English and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine, Salon, Hot Metal Bridge, Clare Literary Journal, and Blinders Literary Journal among other journals. He was a finalist for a 2019 Maine Literary Award. Patterson teaches high school English in Maine and at Southern New Hampshire University’s Online MFA program in Creative Writing. He is currently at work on his second novel.
As a journalist and beer critic, Patterson is regular contributor to Maine Magazine. His beer writing has appeared in the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Activity Maine, and Maine Brew Guides. His Beer Muse column appeared weekly in Maine Today from 2014 to 2018.
In addition to writing, Dave is also a musician and songwriter. He spent a decade in the Portland based band, This Way. The band shared bills with G. Love and Special Sauce, Mason Jennings, and My Morning Jacket, and won a Portland Phoenix Award for Best Americana Band. His current music projects are The High Spirits and Peddle Steal.
As a journalist and beer critic, Patterson is regular contributor to Maine Magazine. His beer writing has appeared in the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Activity Maine, and Maine Brew Guides. His Beer Muse column appeared weekly in Maine Today from 2014 to 2018.
In addition to writing, Dave is also a musician and songwriter. He spent a decade in the Portland based band, This Way. The band shared bills with G. Love and Special Sauce, Mason Jennings, and My Morning Jacket, and won a Portland Phoenix Award for Best Americana Band. His current music projects are The High Spirits and Peddle Steal.
