Rick Wright lives in Bloomfield, NJ, with his wife, Alison Beringer, and their chocolate lab, Gellert. A native of southeast Nebraska, Rick studied French, German, Philosophy, and Life Sciences at the University of Nebraska before making a detour to Harvard Law School. He took the Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University in 1990, then spent a dozen years as an academic, holding successive appointments as Assistant Professor of German at the University of Illinois, Reader in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and Associate Professor of Medieval Studies at Fordham University. His scholarly publications include two books on the Latin school literature of the Middle Ages.
Rick served as a department editor at Birding magazine from 2004 to 2008 and as the editor of Winging It from 2005 to 2008; he is currently the book review editor for Birding and The ABA Blog. His own forthcoming publications include a guide to New Jersey birds and the sparrows volume in the Peterson Reference Guide series.
The Managing Director of WINGS from 2008 to 2010, Rick is a widely published writer, a popular lecturer at birding events, and an enthusiastic tour leader in Europe and North America. His time afield is documented in his blog, Birding New Jersey.