Author Profile: Tonya Plank

Name: Tonya Plank
Website: http://www.tonyaplank.com/
Bio: Tonya Plank was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She has a B.A. in English and Political Science from the University of Arizona, an M.A. in History from Brown University, and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School at Newark. She worked as an appellate public defender in New York City for many years. While practicing law full-time, she wrote her first novel (Swallow), which was published in December 2009. Swallow, an Amazon best-seller in legal fiction, received several awards, including a gold medal for best regional fiction in the 2010 Independent Publisher Awards (IPPYs), the gold medal for women’s fiction in the 2010 Living Now Book Awards, and was a finalist in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards and the National Indie Excellence Awards. A former competitive ballroom dancer and a longtime balletomane, Tonya writes a dance blog, Swan Lake Samba Girl, which has been lauded by James Wolcott of Vanity Fair and Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal, and has been cited in those publications as well as the New York Times Arts Beat blog, the Washington Post, and CNN.com. The blog won a 2007 award from the Public Defender Network for best blog by a public defender that has nothing to do with the job. She also writes for the Huffington Post and several dance publications.
Currently: Tonya lives in New York and is working on her second novel, an urban / legal drama about a group of young men who witness a shooting from various perspectives.