Thomas Lynch is a writer and a funeral director. His collections of poems include Skating with Heather Grace (1987), Grimalkin & Other Poems (1994), Still Life in Milford (2000), Walking Papers (2010) and The Sin-eater: A Breviary (2011).
The Undertaking (1997), his first book of nonfiction, won The American Book Award, The Heartland Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bodies in Motion and at Rest (1998) won the Great Lakes Book Award and Booking Passage (2005), was named a 2006 Notable Book by the Library of Michigan as was his book of short stories, Apparition and Late Fictions, in 2011.
His work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Granta, Newsweek, Esquire, The New York Times, The Times of London and The Irish Times and has been broadcast by NPR, the BBC and RTE in Ireland.
Since 1974 Thomas Lynch has been the funeral director in Milford, Michigan. He and his son, Michael, operate funeral homes there and, since 2009, in Brighton, MI. He divides his time between homes in Michigan, and in Moveen, Co. Clare, Ireland where he keeps an ancestral cottage.
His most recent book, Whence & Whither – Essays on Life and Living has just been published by Westminster John Knox Press. His New & Selected Essays, The Depositions, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in New York.