May 21, 2024 

Professor Faladé will speak on his research and discoveries while writing Black Cloud Rising, concerning the U.S. Colored Troops and their activities in North Carolina and the Outer Banks. Of particular interest is the action by the African Brigade, a unit of former slaves led by General Edward Augustus Wild, in hunting down rebel guerillas in that area.

A former Fulbright Fellow to Brazil, David Wright Faladé is the 2021-22 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow of the NY Public Library’s Cullman Center for Writers. 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. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois.

David Wright Faladé is the author of three books: the narrative history Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, and the novels Away Running and most recently, Black Cloud Rising.  An excerpt from Black Cloud Rising, entitled “The Sand Banks, 1861,” appeared in the New Yorker.