Who, me? I’m Daryl. I live in Seattle, Washington, which means I spend a lot of time in coffee shops. A lot.  Contact me here.

Or contact my agents. My literary agent is Seth Fishman at The Gernert Company, and my film/tv representatives are Anna DeRoy and Olivia Burgher at WME.

More about me

I write novels and short stories in a variety of genres, but I’ve also written comics and video games. I teach every year at the Viable Paradise Writing Workshop (apply!).  I also do some programming on the side.

I grew up in Chicago, and have lived in a few states along I-80 — Pennsylvania, Iowa, Oakland — and now live in Seattle and spend a good amount of time in State College, PA. Both sides of my family came out of Cades Cove, Tennessee, and the eastern parts of that state are covered in cousins.

Book stuff:

My latest novel is When We Were Real (Saga Press, 2025), a science fiction novel in which we all found out seven years ago that we were living in a simulation. Before that was the Appalachian horror novel, Revelator (Knopf), a 2022 Dragon Award and Locus Award finalist, and Washington Post book of the year. My SF murder mystery novella The Album of Dr. Moreau (tor.com) was an Edgar award finalist. My novel Spoonbenders was a Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award finalist. The novella We Are All Completely Fine won the World Fantasy and the Shirley Jackson awards, and was a finalist for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus awards. 

The SF novel Afterparty was an NPR and Kirkus Best Fiction book of 2014, and a finalist for the Campbell and the Lambda Literary awards. My first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award. My other novels are YA horror novel Harrison Squared, The Devil’s Alphabet (a Philip K. Dick award finalist) and Raising Stony Mayhall (a Library Journal best SF book of the year).

My short stories have been nominated for the Hugo and other awards. Many of them are collected in Unpossible and Other Stories, which was named one of the best books of of the year by Publishers Weekly. He wrote the choose-you-own-adventure -style video game, Flatline, for 3 Minute Games. His comics work includes the Legenderry: Green Hornet, the Planet of the Apes, Dracula: The Company of Monsters (co-written with Kurt Busiek), and the graphic novel The Secret Battles of Genghis Khan.