Essays

Wheeler craves historical context and is inspired by writers and artists who have come before him. Reading has always been the starting place for his writing, and he is always eager to share the ways books have changed him for the better. Below are several of his essays about literature, art, faith, and sexuality.

Death and Its Museum | Dave Wheeler

Dave Wheeler visits the Museum of Death in Los Angeles, and walks through his fascinations with mortality.

Catapult

Drama Queens and Fever Dreams

King Ludwig II's fanatical obsession with Richard Wagner, and how it culminated in the bank-breaking Neuschwanstein Castle.

VAN Magazine

Queer Issue: God Made Me Gay, Books Made Me Queer

God Made Me Gay, Books Made Me Queer

The Stranger

Honey in the Throat

Oh John Cage's speaking and writing voice.

VAN Magazine

Modern Hospitality - The Morning News

Faced with a stranger at the door seeking shelter for the night, what do you do?

The Morning News

A Moment Spins on the Axis of You: The Fourth Dimension of Yayoi Kusama's “Infinity Mirrors” | Dave Wheeler

The author reflects on Kusama's visual art and the use of time and space inside a museum exhibit.

Catapult

My First Time Being Sober in a Gay Bar

"It's a little like coming out," a lesbian friend told me when I admitted I was going sober

The Stranger

Science for Boys by Dave Wheeler | Hippocampus Magazine

With small but steady hands, the care of a surgeon, I bring my Swiss Army knife to the center of my latest subject: a faded green rabbit of matted velveteen...

Hippocampus Magazine - Creative Nonfiction Published Monthly

Some Holy Ghost - The Other Journal

Several pieces displayed in an art museum exhume the challenging past that led one young poet to a renewed sense of faith.

The Other Journal

Two Men Kissing | Dave Wheeler

“One man kisses another, they fool around, and it’s all downhill from there.”

Catapult