He began his writing career in the second grade in Sylva, North Carolina while stretched out on the living room floor watching the Milton Berle Show. Though his "Blind Justice" plots featuring a cadre of animal characters in situations that tested human ethical behavior never made it to publication, David Schulman knew what he wanted to do. It only took him another 40 years to get around to doing it.

After two decades developing his own chain of clothing stores in Western North Carolina, he decided that the "shmahta business" as it was called in his family, was not headed in the right direction. He began chronicling his own and other's history of growing up Jewish in the South, eventually winning the N.C. Press Club's Best Personal Columnist Award for 1994 and 1995 for his articles in Charlotte's Times-Outlook magazine. He completed a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa after his career change and now writes frequently for OUR STATE/DOWN HOME IN NORTH CAROLINA magazine as well as other periodicals. He served on the Editorial Board of the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper in 2002. The Past Is Never Dead is his first novel.

He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Denissa, a quilt artist, and they have two children; Nathan, a sophomore at Savannah College of Art and Design, and Stephanie, an Emory University graduate living in Atlanta.