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.[1] 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.

He has also published under the name "David Wright Faladé", in honor of his biological father. His father Maximien Faladé was a devout Catholic from Porto-Novo in Benin, the grandson of Béhanzin, the last King of Dahomey.[2]

• 2017: International Board on Books for Young People, grades 9–12, Away Running[15]
• 2011: Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.[16]
• 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.

• Official website