David Wright (writer)

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. • • 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. == References ==