David Horsey was born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1951 and became a Seattle resident in 1954. After graduating with honors from Ingraham High School, he received a BA in Communications from the University of Washington where he was editor of the student newspaper, The Daily. As a Rotary Foundation Scholar, Horsey went on to earn an MA in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury (United Kingdom). He was named as one of the 150 most notable alumni of the University of Washington in the 20th Century and served as a member of the advisory board for the UW College of Arts and Sciences.

His father, Raymond W. Horsey, was a musician and music teacher. He led a dance combo that played in hotel lounges in Colorado Springs and Evansville, Indiana. When he and his wife returned to their home state of Washington in 1954, he first started teaching at Queen Anne High School and later at Ingraham High School. Horsey's mother, Jeanne M. Horsey (b.1920-d.2012), is largely responsible for getting braille textbooks in the Washington state public schools. During the 1950s when she worked for the Seattle School District, she was dismayed at the shortage of braille materials available for blind students. Determined to make change, she learned braille and was certified by the Library of Congress as a literary braille transcriber. She taught the course to other parents, teachers, friends, anyone who wanted to learn, and developed a team of braille transcribers eager to produce braille. Jeanne also founded Seattle Area Braillists (SAB), a nonprofit organization dedicated to transcribing textbooks into braille for all grade levels to be used by students throughout the state. SAB members held Library of Congress certifications in Literary Braille Transcribing, Braille Mathematics Transcribing, and Music Braille Transcription.

Horsey's first job after college was as reporter for the Bellevue Journal-American through 1979, when he was hired to be the editorial cartoonist of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. David Horsey became a nationally-recognized editorial cartoonist and columnist for the Seattle P-I over his three-decade career at the newspaper, spanning their years as a print and then digital publication. His cartoons were distributed to more than 450 newspapers by North America Syndicate and his work has appeared in a wide range of national publications. Horsey's duties for the P-I have taken him to national political party conventions, presidential primaries, the Olympics, and Japan and Europe. In 1993, he was one of only 25 Americans invited to participate in the European Community Visitorship Program in Brussels, Belgium. Horsey completed a year at the Hearst Newspapers Washington Bureau where he took a closer look at Congress, the White House, and the presidential campaign for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's editorial page. At the end of 2011, he left the P-I to work for the Los Angeles Times, where he remained until January 2018. His work then appeared in the Seattle Times until July 2018, following which he worked for the Tribune Content Agency.

Horsey's work has been recognized by the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, first in 1999, when many of his cartoons focused on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and in 2003, when he caricatured the Bush administration. In 2014, he was again a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for cartoons related to social justice issues. The National Press Foundation chose Horsey as America's cartoonist of the year in 1998, honoring him with the Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded Horsey first place for editorial cartooning in the Pacific Northwest for 1997, adding to his collection of 12 first place SPJ regional awards for cartooning, governmental reporting and spot news reporting. Horsey's editorial cartoons took first place in the 1994 Best of the West journalism competition and, in 1995, he was the first cartoonist to win the Environmental Media Award. In 1991, he received a Global Media Award from the Population Institute and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.

Horsey has published several collections of his cartoons—Politics and Other Perversions (1974), Horsey's Rude Awakenings (1981), Horsey's Greatest Hits of the '8Os (1989), The Fall of Man (1994), From Hanging Chad to Baghdad (2003), Draw Quick, Shoot Straight (2007), Drawing Apart (2020). In 1992, he co-edited an anthology, Cartooning AIDS Around the World. One of his cartoons, "The World According to Ronald Reagan," was reproduced in poster form and sold thousands of copies worldwide.

Sources: A Tribute to Jeanne Horsey | Carolyn’s Braille Services (cmbrailleservices.com) Horsey, David (b. 1951) - HistoryLink.org David Horsey - Wikipedia David Horsey of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - The Pulitzer Prizes Horsey, David 1951- (Dave Horsey) | Encyclopedia.com