David Wright (writer)

Wright at the 2016 Texas Book Festival.

David Wright (born 1964) is an American writer who grew up in Borger, Texas. He holds a B.A. from Carleton College, and an M.F.A. 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.

Books

• Away Running, a novel (Orca Book Publishers, 2016). www.awayrunning.com
• Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers (Charles Scribner's Sons|Scribner, 2001; Oxford University Press paper, 2002). www.fireonbeach.com

Documentary film

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

Other publications

• The Village Voice
• Callaloo
• Gastronomica
• Paste Magazine
• African American Review
• The CLA Journal
• The Journal of Negro History
• Naval History
• North Dakota Quarterly
• Reflections in Ink
• Painted Bride Quarterly
• Shenandoah
• Sixty-four
• The Southern Review
• Virginia English Bulletin

Television journalism

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

Awards

• 2011: J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholar, 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.
• 2000: National Association of Black Journalists, Salute to Excellence Award, First Prize for a Television Feature News-Story, "The Pea Island Story".
• 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, CT.

External links

• Author's page
• Author's page, University of Illinois
• Away Running, a novel
• Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, with photographs