Evan Wright, an award-winning journalist and the author behind Generation Kill, is dead. He was 59.
According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, Wright died by suicide on Friday, July 12. His death was also confirmed to Rolling Stone by his widow, Kelli.
Wright famously joined the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the early stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He used his experience to pen a series of articles for Rolling Stone titled “The Killer Elite,” which earned him a 2004 National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting.
His reporting became the basis for his 2004 book, Generation Kill, which was adapted into a seven-part miniseries in 2008. Executive producer David Simon opened up about working with Wright on X, formerly Twitter.
“We’ve lost a fine journalist and storyteller. Evan’s contributions to the scripting and filming of ‘Generation Kill’ were elemental. He was charming, funny and not a little bit feral, as many reporters are. So many moments writing in Baltimore and on set in Africa to remember,” he wrote.
Lt. Nathan Fick, one of the subjects featured in “The Killer Elite,” paid tribute in a statement on LinkedIn.
“I knew Evan as a good and gentle guy in a place that was neither good nor gentle. He wasn’t a Marine, but many of us who spent March and April, 2003 alongside him have thought of Evan for the past two decades as one of us. Rest in peace, brother,” he wrote.
In addition to Rolling Stone, Wright contributed to various publications throughout his career, like Vanity Fair and Hustler. In 2008, he earned a National Magazine Award for Profile Writing for his work on the Vanity Fair article “Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood.”
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Wright also wrote 2009’s Hella Nation and 2012’s How to Get Away With Murder in America.
His last project was working as a co-executive producer on Teen Torture Inc. The Max documentary series, which now available to stream, “follows on-going efforts to expose America’s “troubled teen” industry (TTI),” per a press release.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, he was also interviewed about his time at the “South Florida-based so-called scared straight program for at-risk adolescents” called The Seed, for the series.
Wright had been highly promoting the project on his account on X.
“I was a 13 year old kid tryna escape a really abusive, alcoholic home –and instead — as is really common in America — I was branded a mentally-troubled criminal, threatened with incarceration and sent to a place of total horror and abuse that was funded by the government,” Wright wrote in one of his last tweets. “This happened to me & about 9,000 other kids. Story I tell in this documentary on HBO MAX and subject of my next book.”
Wright is survived by his wife and his three children.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
