David Shipko is a doctoral candidate in English Literature at Johns Hopkins University, and a scholar, theorist, and writer of fictions—speculative and mundane—against capitalist realism. His dissertation examines the aesthetics and/as politics of contemporary climate fictions across print, visual, and digital interactive media.

After studying cinema-television production at the University of Southern California, he worked as a production assistant on music videos, commercials, television content, and live-action and animated feature films by artists and studios both independent and major, while also serving as an infantry officer in the California Army National Guard.

He received his M.A. in English from California State University, Los Angeles in May 2019, where he also taught first-year writing. For his thesis, he wrote a 550-page sf novel about class struggle across the universe, titled Worlds to Win, and a critical introduction historicizing and theorizing its politico-aesthetic interventions. He has yet to revise the novel for publication.