David J. Peterson

Orange County, CA

David J. Peterson is a writer and language creator. He created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for HBO's Game of Thrones, and helped to found the Language Creation Society. He currently works as a language creator on NBC's Emerald City, the CW's The 100, and MTV's The Shannara Chronicles. Previously he's worked as an alien language and culture consultant on the Syfy original series Defiance. He's also worked on the Syfy original series Dominion, the Showtime series Penny Dreadful, and the CW series Star-Crossed. He's passionate about art, education and ice cream.

David is the author of Living Language Dothraki and The Art of Language Invention from Penguin Random House. He's also recently started a YouTube series entitled The Art of Language Invention.

  • Work
    • HBO
  • Education
    • UC Berkeley
    • UCSD