David Goodwillie is the author of the memoir SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME (Algonquin, June 2006), and is also a contributor to the anthology MY FATHER MARRIED YOUR MOTHER (W.W. Norton, May 2006). He has written for national magazines, newspapers and literary journals including Men's Health, Black Book, Swink, Divide, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Newark Star-Ledger.

David was born in Paris in 1972 and grew up in and around London, New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He graduated from Kenyon College in May 1994 and a week later found himself trying out for the Cincinnati Reds. Though he was soon drafted to play professional baseball by the Newark Buffalos, his career was short-lived. After being unceremoniously released, he moved to New York City to become a writer. But life got in the way.

In the mid and late 1990s David held a series of improbable jobs including private investigator, Sotheby's auction house expert, investigative journalist, and Internet entrepreneur. Taken together, his experiences reveal a fascinating city in all its chic and sordid incarnations. It took seven years in Manhattan before David finally began writing in earnest. As he says in his memoir: "I see now, all those years, jobs, women, apartments...all that time, gathering speed through century's end and beyond, all of that was worthwhile, indeed necessary, to get here, this point, this beginning...I spent years dreaming of writing, and now, finally, finally, I'll write about those years of dreaming." SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME is the remarkable result.