Constitutional Litigation, Appeals, and Sentencing Project<\/a> at the UW. )<\/p>\nAfter law school, Wright moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, to clerk for Lavenski Smith, a conservative African American federal judge on the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (now its chief judge) \u2014 \u201cconsidered at that time the most conservative [appeals court] in the country,\u201d says Wright. Wright calls it a great experience and one with a lot of power; behind the scenes he was working on opinions related to abortion and same-sex marriage that would become law. \u201cI was 25,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt was sort of insane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved the guy,\u201d Wright says of Smith, noting that the clerkship was an education in \u201cwhy conservatives think about the court system the way they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the clerkship, Wright moved to Washington, D.C., to prosecute voting rights cases for the Department of Justice. He still marvels at \u201cthe extraordinary amount of power they give young people,\u201d he says. He worked on race-based discrimination claims and the MOVE Act, which protects military and overseas voting. \u201cIt can be fun,\u201d says Wright, but it was also exhausting, involving a lot of travel \u2014 \u201cYou would go into towns and do investigations, talk to attorneys general and solicitors general, you\u2019re meeting candidates, you\u2019re going to the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re there representing the United States,\u201d he says, and \u201cit was no less exhilarating\u201d than his clerkship.<\/p>\n
And yet, his urge to write had not gone away. He was walking by the Johns Hopkins D.C. campus near DuPont Circle one day when he passed an \u201copen house\u201d sign for the school\u2019s creative writing program. He went in.<\/p>\n
\u2018A huge risk\u2019<\/em><\/p>\nWright squeezed in his master\u2019s from the Johns Hopkins writing program at night while still working for the Justice Department, then toyed with the idea of going on to get a master\u2019s degree in fine arts. But he knew that would be a major detour from his legal career and \u201ca huge risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the 2012 election season approaching, Wright put himself on the spot: \u201cDo I really want to do another election?\u201d he asked himself. He ended up making the \u201ccrazy\u201d leap, leaving the Justice Department for UW-Madison\u2019s MFA program.<\/p>\n
Madison has one of the top programs in the country, but Wright chose it in part because it\u2019s a two- rather than three-year program, and he did think he would go back to law.<\/p>\n
He was writing short fiction, but as he went on, the stories kept getting longer and longer. Encouragement from UW faculty led him to look toward a novel. \u201cWrite the novel only you could write,\u201d then-faculty member Lorrie Moore suggested, and he launched into what would become The Coyotes of Carthage<\/em>. He would come home, walk his dogs, and write for two hours every evening. Much of his DOJ experience turns up in the work, as Dre works to influence an election to benefit a mining company that\u2019s keen to take over public land.<\/p>\nWright calls himself \u201ca noisy writer,\u201d who has to work alone, with music on, and he tends to listen to the same song on repeat. He also speaks sentences aloud \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t have a natural feel for the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Coyotes of Carthage<\/em> would take four years to write. It was once twice as long as it is in published form \u2014 Wright calls the cutting process \u201cpainful, not just for the ideas, but also emotionally.\u201d<\/p>\nIt is a dark and ambivalent book, though not without humor and compassion. Yet there is a sense of the shrugged shoulder about it \u2014 this is the way it is; what can be done about it? As Dre thinks of his job, he puts it this way: \u201cHe chose neither the audience nor the theater; he merely produced the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately the book is cynical,\u201d Wright admits, \u201cbut I\u2019m happy I had faith in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright wanted the book to be a good read while still serving a purpose, spreading the word about the effect of dark money on local elections. And in that sense, the book could hardly be more of-the-moment, as often overlooked races for school board and secretary of state, for instance, have had an impact on the teaching of history, transgender policies and election administration. In small races, it\u2019s not hard for a big player to come in with dark money and manipulate the results, as Dre does in Coyotes<\/em>.<\/p>\nAfter coming to Madison in 2012 for the MFA program, Wright started picking up a few cases from the public defender\u2019s office. \u201cIt was important to me to still practice law and to be as important to the community as possible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When he graduated in 2014, he applied for law jobs \u201call over,\u201d and by chance a job at the University of Wisconsin Law School opened up teaching clinical classes and working as a trial attorney for the Innocence Project; a few years later, he became co-director of that program.<\/p>\n
He speaks passionately of the case of Sam Hadaway, a man with some developmental disabilities who served time for a crime that a serial killer committed; Wright and the Innocence Project ultimately won cases overturning his conviction, his release from prison and a new trial, which the state declined to prosecute. Despite ample evidence that Hadaway was not the criminal, the state refused to let Hadaway out until it was forced to do so. \u201cWe had to fight, and they fought [back] hard,\u201d says Wright. \u201cThat\u2019s always shocking to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to teaching law, Wright also teaches creative writing at the UW. In those classrooms, he wants to create a \u201ccommunity where people feel comfortable. A workshop relies on people being able to make themselves vulnerable by sharing.\u201d While MFA candidates need stronger critiques, he thinks undergraduates and students in private workshops might need encouragement more. \u201cPeople write for all sorts of reasons. From therapy to deal with very serious stuff, to escape \u2014 but not always to publish a book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juicy cases<\/em><\/p>\nThis summer Wright is teaching federal appellate litigation and practice. If that sounds dry to you, as the bumper sticker says, you\u2019re not paying attention.<\/p>\n
Wright wants the class to be fun, and opts for \u201cjuicy\u201d cases that illustrate core principles.<\/p>\n
On a hot July afternoon, about a dozen students seat themselves in a supercooled room in the UW Law School on Bascom Hill before Wright strides in and spends a few minutes synching his laptop to the projection equipment. \u201cWe have three cases to get to today,\u201d he says without preamble, and launches into the first, United States v. DiFrancesco<\/em>.<\/p>\nWright cuts to the heart of the narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s New York in the 1970s and Eugene DiFrancesco, he\u2019s a mobster. In the \u201970s the DOJ is on the mobsters\u2019 cases. They need a distraction. So they start bombing buildings and blaming it on hippies and Black people! Did it work? Yes! So they do it again! And it takes two or three years for the FBI to catch on.\u201d Now there\u2019s a plot for a novel.<\/p>\n
In the classroom Wright is low-key, guiding students with prompts like \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d or \u201cWhat is the actual issue here?\u201d and leading them to the key next step: \u201cBut do you think that\u2019s consistent with justice?\u201d<\/p>\n
The connection to our current moment in legal circles is quick and seamless. The decision in United States v. DiFrancesco<\/em>, in favor of the defendant, was written by Justice Harry Blackmun; one of the students questions the reasoning behind it.<\/p>\n\u201cAre you disagreeing<\/em> with Justice Blackmun?\u201d Wright says, with obvious amusement. \u201cWhich is very in vogue, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\nThere\u2019s a snort from a single student and Wright has to explain that Blackmun wrote the decision in the recently overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em>, which produces some bitter groans.<\/p>\nRoe v. Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\nWright teaches these double jeopardy appeals the way he\u2019d earlier explained to me the connection between the law and creative writing.<\/p>\n
A brief is a perfect story form, he tells me. \u201cYou tell a really good and interesting short story, and then you talk about why that story is messed up. It\u2019s a story followed by an essay that says: \u2018Let\u2019s reflect on this story that I just told.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The second novel<\/em><\/p>\nFor the time being, at least, Wright has settled down. He has lived in the Madison area for a decade, the longest he\u2019s lived anywhere.<\/p>\n
During the pandemic shutdown, both of Wright\u2019s two dogs passed away; one had been with him since law school. \u201cI kept telling people, I don\u2019t want another dog,\u201d he says. He lasted three weeks without one. His affection for his pets is clear; he even felt the need for a change of scene after his dogs died and he moved, buying a house in Verona. His new pal is a black lab rescue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had originally planned to leave Madison after getting the MFA, then after the book was published.\u201d But when the time came, he decided to stay \u2014 he\u2019s not sure where else he would want to go. This new geographic stability doesn\u2019t necessarily make him feel rooted.\u201cFrom 2014-2019, my life was the novel. I never invested a lot of time in getting to know Madison as a place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright is currently working on a new novel, more of a courtroom thriller, that includes Thurgood Marshall as a character. In addition to writing his usual two hours a day, he\u2019s been doing a lot of research.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a civil-rights-era novel set in 1944 during World War II, in Marshall\u2019s early days when he founded the NAACP\u2019s Legal Defense Fund,\u201d says Wright.<\/p>\n
He wants the book to feel authentic, so in addition to reading biographies of Marshall, he\u2019s delved into topics as disparate as wartime ration portions and how women, in addition to leaving the home to work in factories, were also largely running the criminal justice system. It was also a time when many of the rights we now take for granted did not exist.<\/p>\n
Those protections would not come for another decade or so. \u201cThere was an era especially during the Warren Court, where the Court said we will protect individuals,\u201d Wright notes. \u201cThe Warren Court established a lot of the procedures we know now. Prior to that, there were not a lot of rules.\u201d He pauses.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is mindful that there might not be a lot of rules, again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
This story was published in the Aug. 4, 2022 print edition of <\/em>Isthmus under the title “The plot thickens.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n