Thomas Lynch, an Undertaker, Writes on the Human Condition

Writer Thomas Lynch, the author of five collections of poems and four books of essays, comes from a family of undertakers. “The general rap on funeral directors is that ‘they’re all crooks,’ except mine,” he quipped in a talk he gave at a conference I attended years ago. His book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (1997) won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, the American Book Award, and was a finalist for the prestigious National Book Award. A book of stories, Apparition & Late Fictions (2010), received critical acclaim.