David Pierson is the author of two popular books, Bayou Da Vinci and, most recently, And Lead Us Not. A Louisiana native, Mr. Pierson labored for many years as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor before returning to the classroom as a high school English teacher.
An experienced public speaker who has been interviewed countless times on television, radio and in print — he prefers being “on stage” every day in the classroom, telling stories to his students. He says he finds more intellectual stimulation working with young people than with adults whose minds have already been set.
Well-read, especially in classical literature, Mr. Pierson is a scholar who has written detailed, in-depth reading comprehension questions and answers for many epics, novels, short stories and plays (among them, every play by Shakespeare); and he shares these with his students.
The founder of the longest-running scholastic chess league in the country, the Louisiana Scholastic Chess League, Mr. Pierson lays claim to being the most checkmated person in the history of the game. (That’s because he has drilled nearly five thousand young people on how to force checkmates on their opponents with two rooks, a queen or one rook.)