Dr. Faulkner holds an M.A. in History from East Carolina University and a Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina. He authored Jesse Helms and the Legacy of Nathaniel Macon (Wingate, 1998). He has also written entries for the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Chapel Hill, 1994-1996) and the Encyclopedia of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, 2006), and he has contributed to journals such as the North Carolina Historical Review, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, and The Historian. In 2017 he retired from Winthrop University.