Biography

Thomas Devaney wrote and co-directed the documentary film Bicentennial City (2020). He is the author of Getting to Philadelphia (Hanging Loose Press), You Are the Battery (Black Square Editions), and the nonfiction title Letters to Ernesto Neto (Germ Folios). Devaney is a Pew Fellow in the Arts and his work was featured in Best American Poetry 2019. His poem "The Blue Stoop," inspired the name of the literary hub Blue Stoop: A Home for Philly Writers.

Other books include, Runaway Goat Cart, the solo-opera Calamity Jane, and The Picture that Remains with photographer Will Brown. Devaney’s essays and reviews have been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Brooklyn Rain, Hyperallergic, and BOMB Magazine. 

A Poetic Tribute to Haverford's Trees, was a collaboration between Haverford's Arboretum Association and Devaney's Creative Writing class. It led to the "Under an Oak Tree Tour," in which workshop students read their original poems dedicated to campus trees. Other student-based projects/programs include INSIDE photographs/poems, with the poetry workshop and Vita Litvak's photography class. He taught "Philadelphia: Inventing a City" for the Tri-Co Philly Program in the spring 2019.

He was featured on WHYY TV-12’s Friday Arts Program for his book, The Picture that Remains (The Print Center). Projects include, "Tales from the 215" for "Philadelphia Freedom" show at the Institute of Contemporary Art and poems written for "Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Devaney taught and worked at the University of Pennsylvania for nine years. From 2001 to 2005 he was program coordinator of the Kelly Writers House. He was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Award from Penn's Critical Writing Program in 2008.