Photo courtesy of Cristobal Vivar

David Wright Faladé is the author of the novel, Black Cloud Rising, a New York Times’ Critics Pick and one of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022. His first book, the narrative history Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, was one of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Books of 2001. His second, Away Running, was named an Outstanding International Book by the US Board on Books for Young People.

His new novel, The New Internationals, tells the story of an unlikely love triangle—between a Holocaust survivor, a Sorbonne student from colonial West Africa, and a black GI—set in the turmoil of post-WWII Paris. Read here “Mixeded: A Son’s Story,” the essay that tells the story behind the story at the heart of the book.

A former Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and Fulbright Fellow to Brazil, Wright Faladé teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois. His work has been recognized by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Literary representation: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor.