Award-winning reporter and writer Evan Wright, who was recognized for immersion journalism on American subcultures and writing the ebook Era Kill, which he helped adapt into the HBO miniseries of the identical title, died by suicide final week. Wright was 59.
In response to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, Wright died by suicide on July 12 from a gunshot wound to the pinnacle at a residence in L.A.
Within the weeks earlier than his dying, Wright had been selling the brand new Max documentary, Teen Torture, Inc., through which he’s interviewed about his time in The Seed, a South Florida-based so-called “scared straight” program for at-risk adolescents. In posts on X.com over the previous week, Wright wrote concerning the expertise and the kinship he feels with fellow survivors of the controversial packages, a lot of which have been shut down and reexamined because the lifelong trauma that may end result from the acute abuse these despatched to those amenities endure is being acknowledged.
“Each time I see victims of those packages converse out, I at all times assume, “That’s my brother or sister.” I really feel a bond with anybody who went by way of this. Then I noticed Paris Hilton’s testimony & I noticed, “Oh, shit she’s my sister, too?” However sure, it’s a giant, tousled household of us,” Write wrote in a July 11 publish referencing Hilton’s testimony earlier than the Home Methods and Means Committee in June.
The reporting behind Era Kill, Wright’s 2004 memoir overlaying his time embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan whereas on task for Rolling Stone journal, had garnered him a Nationwide Journal Award for excellence in reporting that very same yr for his articles written for the outlet. “The Killer Elite” follows the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Bravo Firm platoon, or because the ebook’s promo copy states, the “proud, hardened professionals who deal in that the majority specialised of American exports: ultraviolence” on the top of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan throughout the Bush Administration’s so-called “warfare on terror.”
“We’ve misplaced a high quality journalist and storyteller. Evan’s contributions to the scripting and filming of Era Kill had been elemental,” David Simon, showrunner for that collection and for The Wire, wrote through social media on Sunday. “He was charming, humorous and never somewhat bit feral, as many reporters are. So many moments writing in Baltimore and on set in Africa to recollect.”
Wright authored 4 extra books over his profession: Hella Nation: In search of Blissful Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Facet Pipe, Wingnut’s Struggle Towards the GAP, and Different Adventures with the Completely Misplaced Tribes of America is a 2009 assortment of reporting he revealed on numerous subcultures in Rolling Stone and Vainness Honest; American Desperado: My Life – From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Authorities Asset (with Jon Roberts) from 2011 is an account of the latter’s life because the so-called “transportation chief” of the Medellin cartel; and Tips on how to Get Away with Homicide in America, his 2012 ebook concerning the CIA agent on the middle of a large FBI investigation.
Wright was born in Cleveland and raised in Willoughby, Ohio by his dad and mom, each attorneys. He was expelled from the preparatory Hawken College for promoting marijuana after which shipped to The Seed, the place he suffered abuse inflicted by the power’s unlicensed employees. He attended Johns Hopkins College in Baltimore and Vassar Faculty in Poughkeepsie, New York, the place he earned a level in Medieval Historical past.
As a journalist, he launched his profession interviewing South African chief and Zulu prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and had a stint as leisure editor and reviewing porn at Hustler. Quickly Wright started working up prolonged options on controversial individuals and subjects for nationwide titles in a method The New York Occasions stated is “nuanced and grounded in particulars” whereas including gallows humor.
Wright is survived by his spouse, Kelli, and his three youngsters.