David France (writer)

David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author and filmmaker. He is a contributing editor for New York magazine, former Newsweek senior editor and published in magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and GQ. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBT topics.

France is the author of four books, including Our Fathers, a book about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States. The book was adapted by Showtime for a film by the same name, which received Emmy Award nominations and a Writers Guild of America award. The Confession, which he wrote with former Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey, was a New York Times best seller, debuting at #3 in nonfiction hardcover sales and #1 in biography.

His fourth book, How to Survive a Plague, published in 2016, is considered "the definitive book on AIDS activism." It was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, named to numerous best-of and top-ten lists, was a New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2016, and is one of the best-reviewed books of the year. "Powerful...This superbly written chronicle will stand as a towering work in its field, the best book on the pre-treatment years of the epidemic since Randy Shilts’s And The Band Played On… Most of the people to whom it bears witness are not around to read it, but millions are alive today thanks to their efforts, and this moving record will ensure their legacy does not die with them." –Sunday Times

A 2007 article France wrote for GQ, Dying to Come Out: The War On Gays in Iraq, won a GLAAD Media Award. He spent a year with the family of a boy who committed suicide and undertook a forensic approach in an article about it for the Ladies' Home Journal. The piece, entitled "Broken Promises", which he wrote with Diane Salvatore, won a Mental Health America 'Excellence in Mental Health Journalism' award in 2008.

On June 2, 2007, France appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the scientific basis that homosexuality is genetic.

France had been reporting on the U.S. AIDS epidemic since its early years, having moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to New York City in June 1981, just 2 weeks before the first newspaper report about the disease appeared in The New York Times and living in the epicenter of the East Coast epidemic through its first decade, losing his boyfriend of 5 years to AIDS in 1991. In 2012, France's documentary film How to Survive a Plague, about the early years of the U.S. AIDS epidemic, was released. France took a more "intimate" narrative approach, making use of a wide range of archive footage from the height of the American AIDS crisis. He expanded on the documentary film with a book released on World AIDS Day in 2016.

For the film, France received The John Schlesinger Award (given to a first time documentary or narrative feature filmmaker) from the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award from the International Documentary Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best First Film, the group's first time to honor a documentary filmmaker. The film was nominated for an Academy Award, a Directors Guild Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and two Emmys, and won a Peabody Award a Gotham Award, and a GLAAD award.