No need to be ponderous: I am the author of a new book, which is coming out in October, The Story of Ain’t, about the great controversy over Webster’s Third, the so-called permissive dictionary. I am the editor of Humanities magazine, which is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Before this I worked for The Weekly Standard as an assistant managing editor. I still write for the Standard, first-person essays and the occasional books and arts essay. I have also been the editor of Doublethink, published by America’s Future Foundation. And, before any of these experiences, I worked for The Public Interest.
I grew up in Douglaston, a lovely town near the northeastern edge of Queens, New York, and graduated from LaGuardia High School of the Arts in Manhattan before attending Kenyon College in Ohio. I am married to Cynthia, about whom I have sometimes written because I find her so interesting and since she doesn’t mind if I do, and I am the father of three children, whom I’ve mentioned in print, always with a smidgen of guilt and the feeling that I may be giving rise to some later generational resentment. (Photo: Kay Campbell)
David Skinner 