In 1909, Wright wrote a perceptive profile of Edgar Allan Poe for the Los Angeles Times. Wright moved to New York City in 1911. He published realist fiction as editor of the New York literary magazine "The Smart Set," from 1912 to 1914, a job he attained with Mencken's help. He was fired from that position when the magazine's conservative owner felt that Wright was intentionally provoking their middle-class readership with his interest in unconventional and often sexually explicit fiction. In his two-year tenure, Wright published short stories by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Floyd Dell, Ford Madox Ford, D.H. Lawrence, and George Moore; a play by Joseph Conrad; and poems by Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats.