About Tony
Tony Dunbar lives in Southwest Florida on a tidal creek rich with leaping fish, herons, manatees and passing alligators. He is an award-winning author, and in addition to the Florida Fables series he has written extensively about Southern history and civil rights and is the creator of the Tubby Dubonnet mysteries set in New Orleans.
He is a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, District 75, and his campaign website is TonyDunbarForDistrict75. Contributions of any size are gratefully accepted here.
And here’s the REST of the STORY!
Tony Dunbar started writing at quite a young age. When he was 12, growing up in Atlanta, he told people that he was going to be a writer, but it took him until the age of 19 to publish his first book, Our Land Too, based on his civil rights experiences in the Mississippi delta. For entertainment, Tony turned not to television but to reading mysteries such as dozens of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Among his favorites are: Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, and Tony Hillerman, and John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane, and…
Before moving to Florida he lived in New Orleans for a long, long time. In addition to writing mysteries and more serious fare he attended Tulane Law School and had an active legal practice involving, he says, “money.” That practice took a hit in the Hurricane Katrina flooding, but the experience did produce a seventh Tubby Dubonnet mystery novel, Tubby Meets Katrina.
There are ten books in the Tubby Dubonnet series. The main character, The author says, is the City of New Orleans itself, the food, the music, the menace, the party, the inhabitants. But Tubby Dubonnet is the actual protagonist, and he is, like Tony Dunbar was, a New Orleans attorney.
There are three books in the Florida Fables series, all set in and around the Sarasota of frontier days. Those who live here may recognize the period from the titles: The Story of the Sarasota Assassination Society, The Story of the Sarasota Celery Fields, and The Story of Whiskey Corners. The hero is Sarasota’s first lawman, the fictional deputy sheriff Gawain MacFarland.
Dunbar’s writing spans quite a few categories and is as varied as his own experiences. He has written about people’s struggle for survival, growing out of his own work as a community organizer in Mississippi and Eastern Kentucky. He has written about young preachers and divinity students who were active in the Southern labor movement in the 1930s, arising from his own work with the Committee of Southern Churchmen and Amnesty International. He has written and edited political commentary, inspired by seeing politics in action with the Voter Education Project. He is the winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Lewis Melcher Literary Award for his non-fiction.
The Tubby Dubonnet series has been nominated for both the Anthony Award and the Edgar Allen Poe Award.
Hurricane Katrina and the floods, which caused the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans for months, blew Tony into an off-resume job serving meals in the parking lot of a Mississippi chemical plant to hundreds of hardhats imported to get the complex dried out and operating. It also gave Tony time to write Tubby Meets Katrina, which was the first published novel set in the storm. It is a little grimmer than most of the books in the series, describing as it does the chaos in the sparsely populated city immediately after the storm. “It was a useful way for me to vent my anger,” Tony says. Still, even in a deserted metropolis stripped of electric power. Tubby manages to find a good meal.
He is a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, District 75, and his campaign website is TonyDunbarForDistrict75. Contributions of any size are gratefully accepted here.
And here’s the REST of the STORY!
Tony Dunbar started writing at quite a young age. When he was 12, growing up in Atlanta, he told people that he was going to be a writer, but it took him until the age of 19 to publish his first book, Our Land Too, based on his civil rights experiences in the Mississippi delta. For entertainment, Tony turned not to television but to reading mysteries such as dozens of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Among his favorites are: Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, and Tony Hillerman, and John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane, and…
Before moving to Florida he lived in New Orleans for a long, long time. In addition to writing mysteries and more serious fare he attended Tulane Law School and had an active legal practice involving, he says, “money.” That practice took a hit in the Hurricane Katrina flooding, but the experience did produce a seventh Tubby Dubonnet mystery novel, Tubby Meets Katrina.
There are ten books in the Tubby Dubonnet series. The main character, The author says, is the City of New Orleans itself, the food, the music, the menace, the party, the inhabitants. But Tubby Dubonnet is the actual protagonist, and he is, like Tony Dunbar was, a New Orleans attorney.
There are three books in the Florida Fables series, all set in and around the Sarasota of frontier days. Those who live here may recognize the period from the titles: The Story of the Sarasota Assassination Society, The Story of the Sarasota Celery Fields, and The Story of Whiskey Corners. The hero is Sarasota’s first lawman, the fictional deputy sheriff Gawain MacFarland.
Dunbar’s writing spans quite a few categories and is as varied as his own experiences. He has written about people’s struggle for survival, growing out of his own work as a community organizer in Mississippi and Eastern Kentucky. He has written about young preachers and divinity students who were active in the Southern labor movement in the 1930s, arising from his own work with the Committee of Southern Churchmen and Amnesty International. He has written and edited political commentary, inspired by seeing politics in action with the Voter Education Project. He is the winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Lewis Melcher Literary Award for his non-fiction.
The Tubby Dubonnet series has been nominated for both the Anthony Award and the Edgar Allen Poe Award.
Hurricane Katrina and the floods, which caused the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans for months, blew Tony into an off-resume job serving meals in the parking lot of a Mississippi chemical plant to hundreds of hardhats imported to get the complex dried out and operating. It also gave Tony time to write Tubby Meets Katrina, which was the first published novel set in the storm. It is a little grimmer than most of the books in the series, describing as it does the chaos in the sparsely populated city immediately after the storm. “It was a useful way for me to vent my anger,” Tony says. Still, even in a deserted metropolis stripped of electric power. Tubby manages to find a good meal.
