"Erik Wright is the next Leon Metz"
- Marcus Huff, historian and former editor True West Magazine
2016 WWHA Award Winner for Outstanding Article on Western History
RECIPIENT OF 2021 LOLA M. HOMSHER RESEARCH GRANT
Winner of 12 Arkansas Press Association Awards
I have been writing about 19th-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands crime, violence, and warfare for more than 15 years. Specifically, I have focused on Earp-era Tombstone, forgotten gamblers and outlaws of the frontier west, as well as the Apache struggles of southeast Arizona Territory.
My work has appeared in such notable publications as True West Magazine, Wild West Magazine, the Journal of the Wild West History Association, Journal of the West, Bounty Magazine, and the National Tombstone Epitaph.
In addition to my academic papers and popular articles, I have presented lectures at various history symposia including the annual Tombstone Territory Rendezvous, Fort Verde Historic State Park, the Tucson Adobe Corral of Westerners, Wild West History Association annual Rendezvous, and at the Historic Arkansas Museum for their Pen to Podium series in conjunction with the Arkansas State Archives. In late 2017, I was elected as a Member of the Royal Historical Society in London and have published five books including: Main Street Mayhem: Crime, Murder & Justice in Downtown Paragould, 1888-1932; Phil Foote: Lawman, Outlaw... Hell-Raiser; Policing the Underworld: The Life of San Francisco Detective Arthur McQuaide in the Golden Age of Vice & Violence; and West of Hell: The Badmen, Hardcases & Interpid Lawmen Who Made the West Wild. Recently, I contributed a chapter to the 2019 book A Wyatt Earp Anthology published by the University of North Texas Press in 2019.
Since 2017, I have served as assistant editor of the National Tombstone Epitaph and have been responsible for the publication's book reviews, YesterWest column, and the monthly author interview which has included such notable historians as Robert Utley, Richard Etulain, Dan Buck, Larry D. Ball, Brooks Blevins, Jody Ginn, Samuel Dolan, Bob Boze Bell, Donald Chaput, Bill O'Neal, Robert K. DeArment, Mark Warren, John Boessenecker, Jim DeFelice, Julia Bricklin, Patricia Tyson Stroud, Chuck Rankin, and many more.
In 2020, I was named as a contributing editor for True West Magazine.