David Joiner made his first trip to Japan in 1991—a five-month study program in Hokkaido--and three years later moved for the first of seven times to Vietnam. In Japan, where he has also moved numerous times, he has called Sapporo, Akita, Fukui, Tokyo, and most recently the western Japanese city of Kanazawa home.

David Joiner's writing has appeared in literary journals and elsewhere, including Echoes: Writers in Kyoto 2017, The Brooklyn Rail, Phoebe Journal, The Ontario Review, and The Madison Review His first novel, Lotusland, set in contemporary Vietnam, was published in 2015 by Guernica Editions.