DAVID POYER was born in DuBois, Pennsylvania in 1949. He grew up in Brockway, Emlenton, and Bradford, and graduated from Bradford Area High School in 1967. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1971, and later received a master’s degree from George Washington University.
His naval service included sea duty in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific, and shore duty at the Pentagon, Fleet Training Center, Surface Warfare Development Group, Joint Forces Command, and in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He retired from the Joint Forces Command as a captain, with the Defense Superior Service Medal as his highest award.
Poyer began writing in 1976, and is the author of nearly fifty books, including The Med, The Gulf, The Circle, The Passage, Tomahawk, China Sea, Black Storm, The Command, The Threat, Korea Strait, The Weapon, The Crisis, The Towers, The Cruiser, Tipping Point, Onslaught, Hunter Killer, Deep War, Overthrow, Violent Peace, Arctic Sea, and The Academy, best-selling naval thrillers; The Dead of Winter, Winter in the Heart, As the Wolf Loves Winter, The Hill, and Thunder on the Mountain, set in the Pennsylvania hills; and Hatteras Blue, Bahamas Blue, Louisiana Blue, and Down to a Sunless Sea, underwater adventure. Other noteworthy books are The Only Thing to Fear, a historical mystery; The Return of Philo T. McGIffin, a comic novel of Annapolis; and the three volumes of The Civil War at Sea, Fire on the Waters, A Country of Our Own, and That Anvil of Our Souls. He’s also done two well-reviewed sailing novels, Ghosting and The Whiteness of the Whale. Most recently, he published a revised and expanded edition of Heroes of Annapolis, nonfiction about men and women of the U.S. Naval Academy from the Mexican War to the War on Terror, and two craft books, Writing in the Age of AI and Writing Your Memoir in the Age of AI. His next book will be Yucatan Blue, published September 2026.
Poyer’s work has been translated into Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Hungarian, recorded for audiobooks, selected by the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club, etc. Rights to several properties have been sold or optioned for films.
Poyer has taught or lectured at Annapolis, Flagler College, University of Pittsburgh, Old Dominion University, the Armed Forces Staff College, the University of North Florida, Christopher Newport University, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Irish Writers Union, the Historical Novel Society, and other institutions. He has been a guest on PBS’s “Writer to Writer” series and on Voice of America, and has appeared at the Southern Festival of Books and many other literary events. He taught for sixteen years in the Creative Writing faculty at Wilkes University. He’s currently a fellow at the Virginia Center of Creative Arts, a board member of the Northern Appalachian Review, and teaches at the Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat and online with Reedsy and Kevin Anderson. He lives on Virginia’s Eastern Shore with novelist Lenore Hart.
DAVID POYER 