Nick Wilkes
Steve-Wright-04-02-2020
Author Steven Wright is co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
In his debut novel, UW-Madison clinical associate law professor and creative writing lecturer Steven Wright shines a harsh light on dark money.
Wright’s book, The Coyotes of Carthage, which will be published by Ecco on April 14, imagines what an infusion of corporate cash might do to a small Appalachian town in South Carolina.
Wright, who is co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which investigates and tries cases for individuals who they believe have been wrongfully convicted. His novel explores themes related to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which allows corporations and other deep-pocketed organizations to anonymously spend millions of dollars in election campaigns to pursue their own special interests.
The Coyotes of Carthage follows political consultant Andre “Dre” Ross as he undertakes a make-or-break assignment, an election campaign in South Carolina. Traumatized after spending two years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Dre finds himself using ethically sketchy tactics to help his client, a mining conglomerate, convince the citizenry to sell their public land to the highest bidder.
“After Citizens United, I was curious about how local candidates can be successful in the face of a massive organization that might have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to influence local politics,” says Wright.
The novel has vivid characters, including the married couple that becomes the public face of the ballot initiative and the young, naive grandson of Dre's white mentor.
Wright pays special attention to issues of race, including scenes where Dre becomes anxious in the presence of the police.
“I don’t think that is all that unusual an experience for black men, in particular African American men who have had some run-in with law enforcement,” Wright says. “So my hope is that the novel, through moments and gestures like those, helps the reader understand what the experience of black men in America is like.”
The novel is a satirical political thriller with an anti-hero as its protagonist. Dre has his share of problems — a dying brother, a fed-up ex-girlfriend and his own bent toward alcoholism. If he loses this election, his career is over. He is cynical, but can't help sympathizing with the people he manipulates.
Wright was born in Nashville, and spent much of his childhood on the move because his father was employed as an Army doctor. “It was a very non-traditional upbringing in the sense that we moved every two or three years,” Wright says. “But for military families, that just is what life is. You basically have each other. That’s the only constant in your life for those years.”
Wright attended Duke University, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and law school at Washington University in St. Louis. He lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he clerked for a federal judge of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, then was a trial attorney in the Voting Section of the United States Department of Justice.
“It was definitely a great honor and privilege to be a part of President Obama’s and Attorney General Holder’s justice department,” says Wright. “I don’t think you can discount how meaningful it is for a young, black attorney to serve in the Civil Rights Division of the first black president and a black attorney general.”
After some years at the Department of Justice, Wright studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins, earned a master's degree in fine arts at Wisconsin, then landed a job with the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
“I knew I wanted to write a novel, but I knew I also wanted to return to public interest law. My legal career at that point was primarily focused on how best to help poor people in communities of color,” says Wright.
Wright says his novel “is definitely a product of my University of Wisconsin experience,” citing extraordinary support from both creative writing and law school colleagues. He also said he had been inspired by conversations with his criminal defense clients.
“I would share [with clients] that I worked in the DOJ doing voting and election law,” says Wright. “Almost every single time, no matter what the charge, they would quip that politicians are just as crooked as everyone else, but nobody sends them to jail.”
