author
David Wright
A novelist, memoirist, and historian whose work often explores identity, family history, and the hidden corners of the American past. He brings together careful research and vivid storytelling in books that move between personal experience and larger history.
1 Audiobook
About the author
David Wright, who also publishes as David Wright Faladé, is an American writer and professor. He teaches at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his work is centered on African American literature, contemporary American literature, and fiction.
His books span several forms, including fiction, young adult fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. He is known for Fire on the Beach, a nonfiction account of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers; Away Running, a young adult novel; and the novels Black Cloud Rising and The New Internationals. Public biographies and author pages also note that he has published under the fuller name David Wright Faladé in honor of his biological father.
What stands out across his work is the way personal and historical stories meet. Drawing on family history as well as deep archival research, he writes about race, belonging, war, and memory in a way that feels both intimate and wide-ranging.