Tony Burgess

Tony Burgess (born 1959) is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. His most notable works include the 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything and the screenplay for the film adaptation of that same novel, Pontypool. Burgess' unique style of writing has been called literary horror fiction and described as "blended ultra-violent horror and absurdist humour, inflicting nightmarish narratives on the quirky citizens of small-town Ontario: think H. P. Lovecraft meets Stephen Leacock."

Burgess currently resides in Stayner with his wife of fourteen years, Rachel Jones, who is a crown attorney. They have two young children, Griffin and Camille. Their current home is a house that is known by the town as the supposedly haunted former Thistlewaite residence. It was built in 1882 and at one point served the community's funerary needs and has a yard that is rumoured to be riddled with suitcase graves filled with pet cats from a previous owner.Burgess is good friends with fellow Canadian novelist Derek McCormack.

Burgess was born in Toronto and grew up in Mississauga. He graduated in 1978 from Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga, despite having to use day passes from a medium security facility in order to finish high school. Burgess served three months in this security facility for robbing a convenience store with a friend while wearing one of his mother's blouses, inspired after watching A Clockwork Orange and Straight Time.Burgess then moved back to Toronto where he became a fixture on the art and music scene on Toronto's Queen Street West under the name Tony Blue. He performed poetry as an opening act to punk bands and other acts such as Lydia Lunch usually writing what he would be reading, the day of the reading. He also exhibited his paintings, including a solo show at the Xiphotec Gallery and interior and window designs for the Toxic Empire.During this time, Burgess was banned from Toronto's Hotel Isabella when he drank too much alcohol with a friend and tried to burn the hotel down by lighting paper on top of some of the tables within the hotel.In 1989, Burgess enrolled at the University of Toronto. Six years later, in 1995 he graduated with a degree in semiotics. In 1998, Burgess and his wife, Rachel Jones, moved from their flat in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood to a "shack by the river" in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. At this time, Burgess had a brief musical theatre career during which he starred as Curly in the town's local theatre production of Oklahoma!.Burgess has also at one time played in a band called The Ether Brothers, and had jobs as a telephone psychic and as a factory worker at a vinegar factory.