Evan Wright, the award-winning journalist who wrote about US subcultures in the book Generation Kill, which he helped adapt into the HBO miniseries of the same name, has died aged 59.

Wright died by suicide on Friday at a home in Los Angeles, a report by the Los Angeles County medical examiner said.

He appeared in the Max documentary Teen Torture, Inc, in which he spoke about his time in the Seed, a controversial “scared straight” program for children in Florida.

In interviews over the years, Wright spoke about being sent there after his mother’s best friend and her husband were murdered by their son in 1972, leading to his mother’s breakdown. He began to act out and was expelled from school aged 13 and held on drug charges after he pretended to sell marijuana, which was actually catnip. He was then sent to the Seed.