Anthnoy grooms biography

The eldest of six children, he grew up among an extended African American family that also claimed Native American and European heritage.
Anthony Grooms, originally from Louisa, Virginia, has written several pieces of literature and has won many awards for his writings.
Biography.

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Anthony Grooms

Anthony “Tony” M. Grooms is a writer and arts administrator who is well known in the Atlanta area for his work in organizing arts events and for his support and encouragement of other writers.

Born January 15, 1955, Grooms was raised and educated in rural Louisa County, Virginia, 120 miles south of Washington, D.C. The eldest of six children, he grew up among an extended African American family that also claimed Native American and European heritage. His parents—Robert E. Grooms, a refrigeration mechanic, and Dellaphine Scott, a textile worker and housewife—encouraged his education. In 1967, as a preface to the forced racial integration of Virginia’s public school system, his parents enrolled him in the Freedom of Choice plan that brought about limited integration of the white public schools. Though he notes that many of his attitudes about race and class in the United States were formed before 1967, the school integration experience was, nonetheless, a landmark event in his life, contributing to a perspective that is evident in many of his w

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I like to say that I was born in the shadow of Monticello. In truth, the shadow of that little mountain would have fallen far short of the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville on the snowy--my father says blizzardy--morning that I was born. It was 1955, just a few months after Brown v. Board, and so, in regard to the potentialities of my life, the umbra of whatever shadow Jefferson and his cronies might have cast was beginning to lighten. So it was with some optimism that my parents, a refrigeration mechanic and a textile worker, looked upon their first-born of six.

Perhaps because Jim Crow had so badly deprived them (Read Huston Diehl’s Dream Not of Other Worlds), my parents took educating their brood with seriousness and intent. Study was allowed to be broad, but the expectation was always for hard work and success. Even so, the opportunities were limited--restricted, actually--as the segregated school system clung on in rural Virginia. The break came in 1967, when, as a preface to the forced racial integration of the schools, my parents enrolled my siste

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Anthony Grooms teaches fiction writing, literature, and American Studies, and directs the M. A. in Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Also, he has taught in Ghana and Sweden, and lectured in Morocco and the U.A.E. His fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. His novel Bombingham, set against the Civil Rights Movement, is often taught in high schools and colleges. It was a Washington Post notable book and was chosen as a city-wide common read for D. C. The critical edition of Trouble No More: Stories can be found as an e-book, and another novel, The Vain Conversation is forthcoming. Grooms has twice won the Lillian Smith Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Foundation award. He holds fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright. For more information follow him on Facebook or go to anthonygrooms.com.

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