Background
Anthony “Tony” Grooms was born January 15, 1955, and grew up in Louisa, Virginia.
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Anthony Grooms
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Education
He attended a white public school in 1967 consisting of partial integration, and his experience there has had a significant influence on his writing.
Career
Grooms is now a professor at Kennesaw State University, near Atlanta, Georgia, and teaches creative writing and other English courses. He is the oldest of six children in his African-American family, which also has Native American and European backgrounds. Graduating in 1978 from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Anthony Grooms received a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and speech.
He strived for a more advanced education and graduated in 1984 from George Mason University with a Masters of Fine Arts in English.
He has taught at a variety of schools: Clark State University, University of Georgia, University of Cape Coast in Ghana, West Africa, and Kennesaw State University. Grooms has always been a writer, but he never considered himself one until graduate school.
He moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1988 after first finishing graduate school and then marrying Pamela B. Jackson. In Atlanta, he found the civil rights movement during the 1960s as a basis for his writing.
Grooms is now an instructor teaching creative writing, along with other English and literature courses, at Kennesaw State University outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
In 2006, the Georgia Center of the Book chose two of Grooms’ published works, Ice Poems and Trouble Number More, for “Top 25 List of Books all Georgians should Read.”.
