David Wright (writer)

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:Template other David Wright is an American writer.

Early life and education

Wright grew up in Borger, Texas. His mother is a white Jewish woman who survived the Nazi occupation of Paris. Her parents were affluent, assimilated French Jews. His mother was a member of the French Communist Party; she immigrated to the US in the 1950s as the GI bride of an African-American soldier. He holds a BA from Carleton College and an MFA from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also studied at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Before he started teaching creative writing, he was a player/coach on various American football teams in Paris and London. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but lives in Texas.

He has also published under the name "David Wright Faladé," in honor of his biological father, Max Faladé, from Porto-Novo in Benin, the grandson of Béhanzin, the last King of Dahomey.

Works

Books

• The New Internationals, Grove Press, January, 2025.

• Black Cloud Rising, Atlantic Monthly Press, February 2022.

Short stories

• "The Sand Banks, 1861" (2020)

Documentary film

• Rescue Men: The Story of the Pea Island Lifesavers (2010).

Television journalism

• "The Pea Island Story", co-written and co-produced with Stephanie Frederic and David Zoby. Aired on BET Tonight, February 1999.

Awards

• 2017: International Board on Books for Young People, grades 9–12, Away Running
• 2011: Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
• 2009: North Carolina Humanities Council, Large Grant, for production of Rescue Men: The Story of the Pea Island Lifesavers.
• 2005: Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, University of Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters.
• 2004: Tennessee Williams Scholar, Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
• 1999: National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute for College and University Faculty Fellow, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University, "The Civil Rights Movement: History and Consequences".
• 1997–1998: Chancellor’s Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship, Afro-American Studies and Research Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• 1994: Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award, the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, Fairfax, VA.
• 1993: Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship, Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies, Mystic, Connecticut.