Tony Moton
What’s your genre?
Fiction
Are you published?
Self published
What inspired you to become a writer?
My grandmother and aunt gave me a typewriter for my 8th grade graduation. The rest is the proverbial history.
What author do you admire and how have they inspired your writing?
Gay Talese. His 2006 book A Writer’s Life helped crystallize my belief that writing is a vocation to be cherished. At their core, writers and journalists are educators who just happen to be wordsmiths. I find none more enthralling that Mr. Talese, who can weave a tale finer than his custom-made suits.
Name three of your favorite books and their authors
A Writer’s Life by Gay Talese
Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall
Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta
What’s one thing readers should know about you?
I joined my high school newspaper the first week of my freshman year and they assigned me varsity football. That event—and my Apollo GT electric typewriter—changed my life forever.
What one piece of advice would you give to a budding writer?
Write when you want to. Write when you have to. Write when you need to. Just write.
Author Bio
Tony Moton is an assistant professor of sports media, journalism and broadcasting in his second year at Iowa State University. An award-winning journalist and screenwriter, the native of Chicago holds master’s degrees in both fields from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and UCLA, respectively. He has worked as a sportswriter, entertainment columnist, magazine writer and investigative reporter across the country, including his hometown, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, Des Moines, Las Vegas and the Quad Cities. To learn more about Tony, click here.
