Tony Earley

Tony Earley (born 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, but grew up in North Carolina. His stories are often set in North Carolina.

Earley studied English at Warren Wilson College and after graduation in 1983, he spent four years as a reporter in North Carolina, first as a general assignment reporter for "The Thermal Belt News Journal" in Columbus, and then as sports editor and feature writer at "The Daily Courier" in Forest City. Later he attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he received an MFA in creative writing. He quickly found success writing short stories, first with smaller literary magazines, then with "Harper's", which published two of his stories: "Charlotte" in 1992 and "The Prophet From Jupiter" in 1993. The latter story helped "Harper's" win a National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994.

In 1996, Earley's short stories earned him a place on "Granta"'s list of the "20 Best Young American Novelists", and shortly after that announcement, "The New Yorker" featured him in an issue that focused on the best new novelists in America. He has twice been included in the annual "Best American Short Stories" anthology. His writing style has been compared by critics to writers as distant as a young Ernest Hemingway and E. B. White. One of his favorite writers is Willa Cather.

Earley lives with his wife and daughter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

List of works

*"The Blue Star" (2008, Little Brown). This is the sequel to "Jim the Boy." It picks up the story when Jim is a senior in high school.
*"Here We Are In Paradise" (1994)
*"Jim the Boy" (2000, Little Brown)
*"Somehow Form A Family: Stories That Are Mostly True" (2001)
*" Aliceville"