Biography

Thomas Devaney is a Pew Fellow in the Arts, he wrote and co-directed the documentary film Bicentennial City (2020) produced by DocuLabs. Devaney 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). Other books include, Runaway Goat Cart, the solo-opera Calamity Jane, and The Picture that Remains (The Print Center) with photographer Will Brown.

His work has been featured in Best American Poetry 2019, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The American Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB Magazine. His poem "The Blue Stoop," inspired the name of the literary arts org Blue Stoop: A Home for Philly Writers.

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. 

His literature class "Philadelphia: Inventing a City" was the first offered in the joint Tri-Co Philly Program, spring 2019.

In 2021, he was featured in the short films from the Healing Verse series. A spotligt on his book The Picture that Remains aired on WHYY TV-12’s Friday Arts Program. 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.