Ex-Convict Writer Killed in Motorcycle Accident

Former convict Seth Morgan, whose first novel, “Homeboy,” won national acclaim last spring, was killed with a companion when their motorcycle crashed into a bridge abutment, police said.

Investigators said Morgan, 41, and Diane Levin, 37, both of New Orleans, were thrown from the motorcycle and died at the scene Wednesday.

Police said Morgan had been arrested Tuesday on charges of driving his motorcycle while intoxicated, but it was uncertain whether he was drunk at the time of his death.

Morgan had drifted into New Orleans in 1986 after three years in a California prison for armed robbery.

He had started writing in prison, where he won an award for his story of the last days of Janis Joplin, the singer who had been his lover when she died of a drug overdose in 1970.