Biographie
Tony Tost is a screenwriter, director, producer, and poet whose work often focuses on overlooked aspects of the American experience. He is the writer and director of the feature film Americana, starring Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Zahn McClarnon, and Simon Rex. In television, his credits include Poker Face, The Terror, Damnation, and Longmire.
Tost was born in Springfield, Missouri and grew up in a series of single and double-wide trailers in and around Enumclaw, Washington. His parents were the day and night custodians at his elementary school and were the president and secretary of their labor union. Before becoming a writer, Tost began working full-time at the age of fifteen, working fast food and retail jobs, in a pickle factory, cleaning hotels and condos, washing dishes, and janitorial work.
He is a graduate of both Green River Community College in Auburn, Washington and College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri. After his undergraduate education, Tost graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Arkansas. He then completed a Ph.D. in English from Duke University, writing his dissertation on the poetics of innovative modernists such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein.
His first poetry book Invisible Bride won the 2003 Walt Whitman Award judged by C.D. Wright. A second poetry book, Complex Sleep, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2007. In 2011, Tost's book on Johnny Cash's American Recordings was published by Continuum Books in their 33 1/3 series on classic albums.
