David Wright Faladé is a professor of English at the University of Illinois. He is the author of the novel Black Cloud Rising, and co-author of the young adult novel Away Running and the nonfiction book Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, which was a New Yorker notable selection and a St. Louis-Dispatch Best Book of 2001. The recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award, he has written for the New Yorker, the Village Voice, the Southern Review, Newsday, and more.

Credit Cristobal Vivar