To survive the Borderlands
You must live 'sin fronteras'
be a crossroads. --Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands / La Frontera, 1987

David Hatfield Sparks is a librarian, writer, composer, and pianist whose work focuses on multicultural humanities, music/performance and the arts (including documentary film), gender and religion, and librarianship.

He is the author of numerous articles and poems on such topic as the music of GILBERTO GIL published in the Afro-Hispanic Review, and queer spiritual politics in This Bridge We Call Home (2002), edited by Gloria Anzaldua. He is co-author, with his life companion Randy P. L. Conner, and their co-daughter Mariya Ayn Sparks of the Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit (Cassell, 1997) and other published articles and conference papers.  He is also co-author of Queering Creole Spritual Traditions (2004).

He is currently Head Librarian at the College of Alameda in Alameda, California. He has also worked in several library systems, including the University of Texas at Austin as a paraprofessional archivist at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Rare Book and Manuscripts Library. He has also volunteered as an archivist for the San Francisco Public Library History Center and the Lesbian and Gay Archives in San Francisco, CA.

He is also an adjunct insructor of Music at College of Alameda, currently teaching Introduction to World Music (Music 9). He is also a lecturer in and instructor of music and humanities at various community colleges. He also teaches music privately in piano, composition, and voice.