Tony Tost (born

1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...

) is an American

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

and

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

. His first poetry book ''Invisible Bride'' won the 2003

Walt Whitman Award The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...

judged by C.D. Wright. He is the creator, executive producer, and showrunner of ''

Damnation Damnation (from Latin '' damnatio'') is the concept of divine punishment and torment in an afterlife for actions that were committed, or in some cases, not committed on Earth. In Ancient Egyptian religious tradition, citizens would recite th ...

'', a neo-western period drama about the labor wars in America during the 1930s that aired on USA Network and on Netflix outside the US. He is the writer-director of ''

Americana Americana may refer to: *Americana (music), a genre or style of American music *Americana (culture), artifacts of the culture of the United States Film, radio and television * ''Americana'' (1992 TV series), a documentary series presented by J ...

'', a rural crime drama forthcoming from Bron Studios.

Early life

Tost was born in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estimat ...

and grew up in a series of single and double-wide trailers in and around

Enumclaw, Washington Enumclaw ( ) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 12,543 at the 2020 census. The Enumclaw Plateau, on which the city resides, was formed by a volcanic mudflow (lahar) from Mount Rainier approximately 5,700 y ...

. 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 Green River College is a public community college with its main campus in Auburn, Washington. It has a student body of approximately 10,000. The college primarily awards associates degrees but also offers 9 bachelor's degrees. History Green Ri ...

Auburn, Washington Auburn is a city in King County, Washington, United States (with a small portion crossing into neighboring Pierce County). The population was 87,256 at the 2020 Census. Auburn is a suburb in the Seattle metropolitan area, and is currently rank ...

and

College of the Ozarks College of the Ozarks is a private Christian college in Point Lookout, Missouri. The college has an enrollment of 1,426 and over 30 academic majors in Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science programs.https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/college ...

Point Lookout, Missouri Point Lookout is an unincorporated community in Oliver Township, Taney County, Missouri, United States, near Branson and Hollister. Point Lookout is in U.S. post office ZIP code 65726. Point Lookout is part of the Branson Micropolitan Statistica ...

. After his undergraduate education, Tost graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

.Academy of American Poets Web site: Tony Tost Exhibit/author page
accessed November 17, 2006 He then completed a Ph.D. in English from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

, writing his dissertation on the poetics of innovative modernists such as

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

and

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

Career

Tost is the founding editor of the online poetry magazin
''Fascicle''
and previously a co-editor and co-founder, with Zachary Schomburg, o
''Octopus Magazine''
His poems and essays have appeared in the literary journals ''

Fence A fence is a structure that encloses an area, typically outdoors, and is usually constructed from posts that are connected by boards, wire, rails or netting. A fence differs from a wall in not having a solid foundation along its whole length. ...

'', ''Hambone,'' ''Talisman,'' ''Mandorla,'' ''No: a journal of the arts,'' ''Denver Quarterly,'' ''Typo,'' ''American Literature,'' ''Jacket,'' ''Verse,'' ''Open Letter'' and elsewhere. In 2011, Tost's book on

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

's American Recordings was published by Continuum Books in their

33 1/3 (Thirty-Three and a Third) is a series of books, each about a single music album. The series title refers to the rotation speed of a vinyl LP The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph ...

series on classic albums. Critic Joshua Scheiderman wrote that Tost's book "ultimately belongs in the long, rich tradition of texts like

Constance Rourke Constance Mayfield Rourke (November 14, 1885 – March 29, 1941) was an American author and educator. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Sorbonne and Vassar College. She taught at Vassar from 1910 to 1915. She died in Grand Rapids, ...

’s ''American Humor: A Study of the National Character'' (1931) and

Greil Marcus Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. Biography Marcus wa ...

’s ''The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes'' (1997), ostensibly academic studies of American culture but also works of mythopoesis in their own right." Tost was a writer and producer on the A&E and later Netflix television series '' Longmire''. One of Tost's Longmire episodes, called "Chrysalis," received the ''

Bronze Wrangler The Bronze Wrangler is an award presented annually by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum to honor the top works in Western music, film, television and literature. The awards were first presented in 1961. The Wrangler is a bronze sculpt ...

'' from the

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 American West, Western and Native Americans in the United States, American Indian art works and Artifact (archaeology), ar ...

to honor the top works in Western music, film, television and literature. His script "The Olympian" about

Brad Alan Lewis Brad Alan Lewis (born November 9, 1954 in Los Angeles, California) is an American competition rower and an Olympic Games gold medalist. Olympian Lewis qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team but did not compete due to the U.S. Olympic Committ ...

's quest for the 1984 Olympics was selected for the 2016

Black List Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...

ranking of the film industry's best unproduced screenplays. Tost created ''

'', which debuted November 2017 on USA Network and on Netflix outside the US. According to Tost, "I wanted to come up with a pulpy story about America that had big, operatic backstories for the characters and big gestures and unexpected little grace notes. I was inspired by everything from the westerns of

Sam Peckinpah David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic ''The Wild Bunch'' received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute ...

Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Doll ...

John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...

Howard Hawks Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name." A v ...

Budd Boetticher Oscar "Budd" Boetticher Jr. ( ; July 29, 1916 – November 29, 2001) was an American film director. He is best remembered for a series of low-budget Westerns he made in the late 1950s starring Randolph Scott. Early life Boetticher was born in ...

James Mangold James Allen Mangold (born December 16, 1963) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for the films ''Cop Land'' (1997), '' Girl, Interrupted'' (1999), ''Walk the Line'' (2005), '' 3:10 to Yuma'' (2007), '' The Wolverine'' (2013) and '' Logan'' ...

Quentin Tarantino Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...

, the Coens, and

Sergio Leone Sergio Leone (; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter credited as the pioneer of the Spaghetti Western genre and widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cin ...

; to samurai films like Yojimbo and 13 Assassins and Lady Snowblood; to grimy 1970s crime films like Charley Varrick, Prime Cut, Night Moves, and Walking Tall; to crime novels by

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' ...

, Jim Thompson,

James Ellroy Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, sta ...

James Crumley James Arthur Crumley (October 12, 1939 – September 17, 2008)Local author James Crumley dies at 68 url=http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/09/18/news/local/news02.txt date=2008-09-17 accessdate=2008–09=18Fox, Margali''New York Times'' (S ...

. Thematically, my big inspirations are my artistic heroes

and

Merle Haggard Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was an American country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler. Haggard was born in Oildale, California, toward the end of the Great Depression. His childhood was troubled af ...

." Tost was nominated for a 2020 WGA Award for his work on the second season of

The Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...

on AMC. Tost's first film as a writer-director, "Americana," wrapped filming in early 2022 and stars Sydney Sweeney,

Halsey (singer) Ashley Nicolette Frangipane ( ; born September 29, 1994), known professionally as Halsey ( ), is an American singer and songwriter. She was born and raised in New Jersey. Gaining attention from self-released music on social media platforms, sh ...

Paul Walter Hauser Paul Walter Hauser (born October 15, 1986) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his supporting roles in the films '' Cruella'', ''I, Tonya'', '' Late Night'', ''BlacKkKlansman'', and ''Da 5 Bloods''. In 2019, Hauser had his breakout ...

Zahn McClarnon Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon (born October 24, 1966) is an American actor known for his performances in the Western crime drama series '' Longmire'', the second season of '' Fargo'', and the second season of ''Westworld''. In 2022, he played the le ...

Eric Dane Eric William Dane (born November 9, 1972) is an American actor. After multiple television roles in the 1990s and 2000s, which included his recurring role as Jason Dean in ''Charmed'', Dane was cast as Dr. Mark Sloan on the ABC medical drama tel ...

, and

Simon Rex Simon Rex Cutright (born July 20, 1974), is an American actor, rapper, comedian, and former model. Rising to fame as an MTV VJ, Rex later became an actor known for '' What I Like About You'', starring in three films of the ''Scary Movie'' fr ...

. . It debuted at the South By Southwest film festival on March 17, 2023. . Tost currently lives in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Bibliography

*''Invisible Bride'' (

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

) *''World Jelly'' (

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

) *''Complex Sleep'' (

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

) * ''Johnny Cash's American Recordings'' (criticism, 2011)

Filmography

References

External Links

Tony Tost
at

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tost, Tony 1975 births Living people American male poets American male screenwriters Screenwriters from California College of the Ozarks alumni Duke University alumni Green River College alumni Writers from Los Angeles Writers from Springfield, Missouri Poets from Missouri University of Arkansas alumni People from Enumclaw, Washington Screenwriters from Washington (state) Screenwriters from Missouri 21st-century American poets 21st-century American screenwriters 21st-century American male writers