Literary Reading by Audrey Petty & David Wright

Audrey Petty's stories were first featured in an issue of Callaloo devoted to emerging Black women artists. Since then, her fiction has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, African American Review, StoryQuarterly and Gumbo: Stories by Black Writers. Petty's poetry has been featured in Crab Orchard Review and New Sister Voices: Poetry by Women of African Descent. She also reviews for Black Issues Book Review and American Book Review. She was awarded a residency at the Hedgebrook Colony, a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference, and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Hewlett Foundation.

David Wright is the author of Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Life Savers. His fiction has appeared in Sixty-Four, The Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and African American Review. He has published essays on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, and the teaching of literacy. His television feature, "The Pea Island Story," won a Salute to Excellence First Prize from the National Association of Black Journalists. He has received an NEH Fellowship, a Paul Cuffe Fellowship, and the Zora Neale Hurston Richard Wright Award.