Background
Wright was born in Philadelphia, the son of William C. Wright Senior and Josephine Hartshorne Wright.
Wright was born in Philadelphia, the son of William C. Wright Senior and Josephine Hartshorne Wright.
He graduated at the Germantown Friends School and earned his Bachelor of Arts at Yale University. In the United States. Army, he completed training in Chinese at the Language School in Monterey, California and served as an Army translator and interpreter in Japan, Okinawa and on the United States Ship Oriskany.
He is best known for his non fiction writing covering a wildly divergent list of subjects: from the April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria to genetics and behavior to true crime and grand opera. The great Harvard naturalist and author, East. O. Wilson, said of Wright"s Born that Way, Genes, Behavior, Personality: "lieutenant takes an independent writer and free spirit to tell the story straight, and thank God Wright has done lieutenant"
In addition to Lillian Hellman, the Image and the Woman, Wright"s books include The Von Bulow Affair, and two books with and about Luciano Pavarotti: Pavarotti, My Own Story and Pavarotti, My World. After his Army service, Wright was an editor at Holiday magazine when it was located in Philadelphia and published the likes of John Steinbeck, V.S. Pritchett and Lawrence Durrell.
When Holiday became a casualty of the Curtis Publishing Company’s disintegration, Wright accepted a bizarre offer from composer Gian Carlo Menotti to become manager of Menotti’s Spoleto Festival, then held only in Italy.
Wright’s job was to oversee the production of some ten events put on by the festival’s United States. side. Each of his events was successful, but the overall festival was a financial disaster.
Unnerved, Wright resigned. After struggling for five years writing magazine articles, Wright accepted an offer to become the editor of Chicago Magazine, which he did from 1969 to 1971.
Although the magazine was well received by both Chicagoans and advertisers, his tenure was cut short when the magazine was closed down for making jibes at the elder Mayor Richard Daley.
Although offered editorial positions at three other publications, Wright turned to writing full-time and has been doing so ever since, mostly authoring non-fiction books
