Dave Cullen is an American Non-fiction writer, freelance Journalist, and Filmmaker.
Cullen is best known for the books Columbine and Parkland: Birth of a Movement, and twenty-six years covering LGBT troops in the military.
Both books were New York Times bestsellers, peaking at #3 and 14, respectively. Both received overwhelmingly positive reviews, were named to prominent best books of the year lists, and Columbine earned several major awards. (See awards section.)
His upcoming book, Don't Fall in Love: The Secret Lives of Two Gay Soldiers Hiding in Plain Sight, began as a 2-part, 11,000-word magazine story on those soldiers, which won the 2000 GLAAD Media Award for best online story of the year. Cullen has been following and interviewing them ever since. The 25-year project is slated for a May 4, 2027 release from HarperCollins.
By the time of the Parkland shooting, TV producers began calling Cullen while mass murders were still in progress. "On Feb. 14, 2018, at 3:13 p.m.—54 minutes after the shooting started at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. — Dave Cullen got a text from a producer at "Anderson Cooper 360," asking him to appear on the show that night," the New York Times reported. "At that point, he'd been covering mass killings for so long he had begun suffering from a secondary form of traumatic stress, sometimes 'sobbing all day, mostly in bed, then slumped in a chair.' " The story reported that by the end of the year covering the March for Our Live activists, "He began to heal. 'I had no idea how much sadness was still in me until I saw the 'after' picture from 10 months with them — the happy Dave from pre-Columbine,' he says."
Cullen described some of his writing process to the New York Times. He said he likes to write outside, so he chose apartments within walking distance to Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He also opted for a balcony there. "If I need some fresh air and a different headspace, I can walk out to the balcony and pick up a book and read," he said. "I can get some ideas percolating, write them on paper and rush to my computer right inside."
Cullen has begun working on adapting his IP for television. His website states that he retains the rights to all his IP, has completed the WGA Staff Writer Boot Camp, and intends to executive produce with another partner when the time is right. He also executive-produced a short documentary film for Conde Nast Entertainment on Parkland, and served as a consultant on an episode of John Ridley's ABC series American Crime. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Author's Guild.
Print media work Cullen has worked primarily as a freelancer, and appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, London Times, The New York Times Book Review, Politico Magazine, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, Lapham's Quarterly, Newsweek, BuzzFeed, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Millions, New York Daily News, and WNYC's On The Media.
Cullen's print work has focused heavily on two major subjects: Mass murder and gun safety LGBT troops in the military, and the military more broadly
He has also done significant work on books and pop culture, such as "The Barbie Way of Knowledge," "Forget Charlie Brown," and "Let's see if they'll play this."
He has covered many facets of LGBT life, including the murder trials of Matthew Shepard, Michael Sam coming out prior to the NFL draft, and Mary Cheney's national coming out. Mary Cheney had been publicly out for years, but it had gone unnoticed in the major media and until Cullen broke the story nationally during the 2000 Republican National Convention, when George Bush Jr. nominated her father Dick Cheney as his running mate. (Cheney then served at years as vice president.)
Mass Murder and Gun Safety:
Cullen's work on mass murder began with the Columbine massacre, where he was one of the first journalists on scene, and spent the next ten years researching and writing Columbine. He continued as a media analyst and essayist on succeeding mass murders, writing about several, including the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Mass Murder at the Gay Bar: When a Refuge Becomes the Target.
He contributed as an analyst for the Academy for Critical Incident Analysis (ACIA) at John Jay College, where he has participated in three-day intensives on-site with survivors of major tragedies, as well as noted criminologists, mental health experts and other involved. The have included Virginia Tech, the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, and the 2011 Norway attacks that left 77 dead. Cullen now serves on the board of the ACIA.
He gradually broadened his coverage to the gun safety movement for Vanity Fair, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and others. He spent a year covering the March For Our Lives movement, and published Parkland: Birth of a Movement. Cullen also spent a year researching and writing the first major profile of former US Representative Gabby Giffords, (D-AZ) "How Gabby Giffords Survived a Shot to the Head, and Outsmarted the NRA", and contributed the New York Times guest essay for the tenth anniversary of Sandy Hook, "Republicans Are Breaking With the N.R.A., and It's Because of Us."LGBTs in the military, and the military more broadly:Cullen has been covering LGBT military troops continuously since 1999. This has included the long battle over Don't Ask, Don't Tell, "'Betrayal': Transgender Troops React to Trump's Ban, and "So What's it Like To Be a Gay Cadet at West Point These Days." His broader military coverage has included dispatches from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for The New Republic, "Guantanamo Bay: The 9/11 Trial Has Gone Completely Off the Rails," and "Guantanamo Bay: The Tragicomedy of the 9/11 Trial."
Books Columbine, New York: Twelve, 2009. , Edited by Jonathan Karp. Parkland: Birth of a Movement, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2019. , Edited by Gail Winston. Don't Fall in Love: The Secret Lives of Two Gay Soldiers Hiding in Plain Sight will be published by HarperCollins May 4, 2027. Edited by Noah Eaker.
Don't Fall in Love The publisher's website describes Don't Fall in Love: The Secret Lives of Two Gay Soldiers Hiding in Plain Sight as "An epic work of multi-decade reporting immersed in the lives of two gay soldiers before, during, and after Don't Ask, Don't Tell, from the author of the bestselling contemporary classic, Columbine." The book began in 1999, as a two-part magazine story that led a weeklong series on gays in the military in Salon.com: (Part 2: "A heartbreaking decision.") It was published in June 2000, six years into the policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which would last seventeen years.
Cullen's ethnographic story portrayed the behind the scenes lives of two Army captains and one Marine captain, all serving on active duty in Colorado Springs. An author's note explained that the names were changed, as well as some identifying characteristics. Their identities are still unknown. Cullen has said that they will be revealed in Don't Fall in Love.
In the stories, the captains said that life under the policy was nothing like the public perception, and the story laid out their lives in hiding. Because they said their single biggest problem was that for unforeseen reasons, Don' Ask, Don't Tell made it nearly impossible to have a boyfriend, the story was titled, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Fall in Love." The book uses the final phrase as its title.
The combined story won the GLAAD Media Award for best online story of the year. Cullen has continued following the two Army officers since 2000, and Don't Fall in Love covers their complete lifespan, from their early years fighting unwanted urges, to their careers before, during and after Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Columbine Cullen lived in Denver when Columbine was attacked on April 20, 1999, and on scene within an hour He covered the tragedy periodically for the next several years, primarily as a freelancer for Salon.com, where he published approximately fifty stories. He later covered Columbine and mass murder for Slate, the New York Times, Newsweek, Buzzfeed News and others.
Twenty years after Columbine, Cullen revealed in Parkland that he had suffered two severe depressive episodes covering Columbine, the second and worst episode seven years after the attack. He wrote he had been diagnosed with clinical depression and Vicarious Traumatization (VT), a variation of PTSD.
He wrote that to avoid more severe episodes, he had promised his "shrink" that he would not go back to such a tragedy, and agreed to several additional terms such as not reading victims' stories the first week, and to turn off victim interviews or tributes to the fallen, "unless I promised to hit the mute button if I started to feel the warning signs.
Columbine is in its fourth edition, published in 2024, "The 25 Memorial Edition." It includes a new preface. Earlier editions added an Afterword, Epilogue, scans of the killers' journal, a diagram of the shooting inside the school and environs, a Reader's Guide, and a few corrections to the original edition.
Cullen broke several national stories in the summer after the Columbine attack, including the first leaked passages from Eric Harris' journal explaining his motives the first interview with Lead Detective Kate Battan laying out the investigations key findings. It was the only interview she gave from the time of the attack until her final report more than a year later. the revelation that presumed Christian martyr Cassie Bernall had not "said yes." (Cullen has repeatedly stated publicly that he believes that Cassie's mother, Misty Bernall, who wrote the bestseller She Said Yes, was acting on bad information and made no attempt to deceive.) the first extensive interview with Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis, and the first profile of him.
The FBI granted Cullen exclusive access to the leader of its investigation, clinical psychologist and Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, PhD, widely accepted as having "solved" the case. Cullen spent hundreds of hours interviewing Fuselier over several years, as well as researching the thousands of pages of the killers' writings released and eleven thousand pages of police files. On the fifth anniversary, Cullen broke the story of the FBI's diagnoses of the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and laid out their motives and planning in The Depressive and the Psychopath.
The hundreds of sources Cullen interviewed for the book included Dr. Robert Hare, who created the modern understanding of psychopathy, and the Psychopathy Checklist. The depressive and psychopath diagnoses first put forth in Cullen's piece are now widely accepted, and Columbine is considered the definitive source on the tragedy.
Cullen continued covering and analyzing this ongoing phenomenon for more than the next twenty years. He collaborated with retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole on pieces examining other types of mass killers and their motives in "What Does A Killer Think?" and The Injustice Collectors.
Oprah.com, Slate and the author have published excerpts, which are available free online: Chapter 1: "Mr. D." "God I Want to Torch and Level Everything" "Inside Columbine" Excerpts from the epilogue
Parkland Despite his struggles with Vicarious Traumatization and clinical depression, Cullen went down to Parkland to cover the March For Our Lives movement for Vanity Fair right after the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. His conditions to his editor were that he would only cover the MFOL "uprising," and not the killer, the attack, or even the trauma.