David Bowles, a UTRGV assistant professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, is a published writer who has received awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Texas Associated Press and the coveted American Library Association, one of the most influential distinctions authors can receive.
Bowles was raised in McAllen and attended legacy institution University of Texas-Pan American, where he received his doctorate in English.
His interest in literature began as a child, listening to the stories his grandmother would tell.
“I got interested in stories from my grandmother [Marie] Garza when I was a little kid,” Bowles said. “All of us cousins would be told stories by our tíos and tías, but my grandmother Garza was the family storyteller. She was the best storyteller of all. So, her great, spooky, creepy stories of things like La Llorona and stuff like that is what got me interested in stories at a really young age.”
Additionally, listening to the stories also sparked his interest in reading.
“She’d always joke that she’d run out of stories [to tell] one day,” Bowles said. “She used to tell me that I’d have to get stories out of books, so I bugged my mom to teach me how to read. I started reading before I was in kindergarten.”
From then on, his love for literature and writing grew with the help of his teachers.
“My love for reading just blossomed and then while I was in junior high, I had a great teacher who inspired me to start liking poetry as well and to take myself seriously as a writer. That’s when I started wanting to write.”
By the time he was in college, Bowles had continued practicing and began publishing his work.
“It’s been a matter of practicing and practicing over the years,” he said. “Here at the university, I would get stuff published in Gallery magazine, which is still alive and still being published. And then, I became an English teacher and started teaching other people how to write and eventually that led to publishing my stories and stuff like that.”
As of now, he has 14 published works. Among those are “Shattering and Bricolage” (Ink and Brush Press, 2014), a book of poetry that contains the poem, “Kintsukuroi,” which was quoted on the CBS TV show, “Criminal Minds,” and “They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems” (Cinco Puntos Press, 2018).
On Oct. 24, the quote, “When wounds are healed by love/The scars are beautiful,” was used in the episode titled “Innocence.”
“I was getting ready to go to bed, I was brushing my teeth and my phone started buzzing with all of these notifications, Facebook and Twitter, people telling me, ‘Hey, David, they just quoted you, I can’t believe it!’” Bowles said. “It was pretty cool. I immediately posted about it. You have to kind of take advantage of those moments, to synergize the moment. Another thing writers have to understand is that you have to be a self-promoter. You have to do the work that’s required to get your [work] in front of people. No one is going to just discover you one day; you have to hustle.”
Freshman Liliana Bermudez commends Bowles on his accomplishments and appreciates having talent from the Rio Grande Valley recognized.
“Being in [The Valley], it’s not very common to be publicly [represented] somewhere big,” Bermudez said. “It’s awesome.”
Bowles advises aspiring writers to never give up, even in the face of rejection.
“Don’t give up and don’t let rejection get you down,” he said. “You got to push forward. [In] the publishing business, you’re going to get rejected dozens upon dozens and hundreds upon hundreds of times. It doesn’t mean that you are not good necessarily, it doesn’t mean that people don’t like your work.
“Sometimes, you get rejected for reasons you can’t possibly imagine, like you’re submitting a poem to a journal and somebody else is submitting a poem very similar to it, or your poem doesn’t quite fit what they’re trying to accomplish. It doesn’t fit together with the other poems. It may be a very good poem, but if you just suddenly go, ‘Oh, it was rejected. I give up,’ then you may have a lot of talent and be throwing it away. You just got to keep at it and work, work, work.”
