Tony Crunk (B.A., Centre College; M.A., Philosophy, University of Kentucky; M.A., Literature, & M.F.A., Creative Writing, University of Virginia) has published primarily in poetry and children's literature.
His first collection of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, was the 1994 selection in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and his work has appeared in such journals as Paris Review, Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry Northwest.
He has taught at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, Murray State University (Kentucky), and the University of Montana, and University of Alabama Birmingham.
He has also signed a petition opposed to executions.
Winner of the prestigious 1994 Yale Series of Younger Poets award, Living in the Resurrection placed Tony Crunk among the company of such previous winners as Adrienne Rich, James Agee, Muriel Rukeyser, W.S. Merwin and James Tate. James Dickey, judge of the contest, notes in the foreword that "here is that rare phenomenon, a writer of instinctive formal vision." These twenty-eight poems move from narrative reminiscences of the poet's childhood and lyrical meditations on ordinary objects through to fractured, dream-like remnants and longer prose poems. The result, although varied in its individual parts, creates a whole that collectively illustrates one man's journey through life, a sort of homespun Cain walking the earth, even if that earth is only the dusty soil of the past.
Tony Crunk's collection “Living in the Resurrection” is about the poet's very personal Odyssey: an Odyssey that is intellectual, physical, and ultimately spiritual.