‘Generation Kill’ Author Evan Wright Dead at 59

Award-winning reporter and author Evan Wright, who was known for immersion journalism on American subcultures and writing the book Generation Kill, which he helped adapt into the HBO miniseries of the same name, died by suicide last week. Wright was 59.

According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, Wright died by suicide on July 12 from a gunshot wound to the head at a residence in L.A.

In the weeks before his death, Wright had been promoting the new Max documentary, Teen Torture, Inc., in which he is 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 past week, Wright wrote about the experience and the kinship he feels with fellow survivors of the controversial programs, many of which have been shut down and reexamined as the lifelong trauma that can result from the extreme abuse those sent to these facilities endure is being recognized. 

“Whenever I see victims of these programs speak out, I always think, “That’s my brother or sister.” I feel a bond with anyone who went through this. Then I saw Paris Hilton’s testimony & I realized, “Oh, shit she’s my sister, too?” But yes, it’s a big, messed up family of us,” Write wrote in a July 11 post referencing Hilton’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in June. 

The reporting behind Generation Kill, Wright’s 2004 memoir covering his time embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan while on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine, had garnered him a National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting that same year for his articles written for the outlet. “The Killer Elite” follows the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Bravo Company platoon, or as the book’s promo copy states,  the “proud, hardened professionals who deal in that most specialized of American exports: ultraviolence” at the height of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush Administration’s so-called “war on terror.”  

“We’ve lost a fine journalist and storyteller. Evan’s contributions to the scripting and filming of Generation Kill were elemental,” David Simon, showrunner for that series and for The Wire, wrote via social media on Sunday. “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.”

Wright authored four more books over his career: Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut’s War Against the GAP, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America is a 2009 collection of reporting he published on various subcultures in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair; American Desperado: My Life – From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset (with Jon Roberts) from 2011 is an account of the latter’s life as the so-called “transportation chief” of the Medellin cartel; and How to Get Away with Murder in America, his 2012 book about the CIA agent at the center of a massive FBI investigation.

Wright was born in Cleveland and raised in Willoughby, Ohio by his parents, both attorneys. He was expelled from the preparatory Hawken School for selling marijuana and then shipped to The Seed, where he suffered abuse inflicted by the facility’s unlicensed staff. He attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he earned a degree in Medieval History. 

As a journalist, he launched his career interviewing South African leader and Zulu prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and had a stint as entertainment editor and reviewing porn at Hustler. Soon Wright began working up lengthy features on controversial people and topics for national titles in a style The New York Times said is “nuanced and grounded in details” while adding gallows humor. 

Wright is survived by his wife, Kelli, and his three children.