Bio

My new book Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul will be published by Amistad/HarperCollins on October 15, 2024. I am grateful for the support this project received from Virginia Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Order the book from any bookseller. Find a list for online orders here.

Please visit the Events page to see where you might catch me in person talking about Morningside.

My first book, THE AMERICANO: Fighting with Castro for Cuba's Freedom, received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly: "William Morgan, an American who made his way to the front line of Castro's revolution in Cuba, gets thorough and entertaining treatment in this biography. Largely unknown in the U.S., his story is filled with the suspense of a blockbuster war movie, offering new and insightful perspective into the political climate of 1950s Cuba."

Carlos Eire, the National Book Award winner for his memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana, wrote, "The Americano is history at its best: a brilliant, fast-paced account based on solid research that reads like a great epic novel. . . . As engaging as it is revealing, this narrative opens up the history of the Cuban Revolution from within as no other English-language book has ever done."

From 2005 to 2009, I founded, edited, and wrote for Inside Mexico. Inside Mexico became the most widely distributed English-language periodical in Mexico, publishing long-form articles on such topics as the history of African-Mexicans, the impact of NAFTA, and the "third-culture" that has developed along the Mexican-American border.

I grew up in rural Maine, studied English Literature and Spanish Language and Culture at Harvard College, and earned an MA in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. Since 2003, I've collaborated with my father's arts and education organization Americans Who Tell the Truth. I have worked primarily in media, including book publishing and internet start-ups. I've worked as a writing instructor at Aspen Words and have coached and edited many writers working to complete novels, histories, or memoirs.

Between 1993 and 2016, I lived in Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico. Since 2016, I've lived in Charlottesville, Virginia with my wife, Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Hidden Figures and out son, Giles.

As a journalist and narrative historian, I'm interested in people who dream of changing the world and have the conviction and courage to try. Inevitably, these revolutionary people and their ideas collide with opposing forces, soft and hard, cultural and institutional. And these collisions, which often trouble our sense of who we are as people or as a people, fascinate me.