Tony Junker often is called a “Renaissance Man” because of his many interests and pursuits. “F. Scott Fitzgerald once said via one of his characters that life is best seen through a single window,” Junker notes. “I’ve never been able to hold to that.” Besides writing fiction, Junker is an award-winning architect, a student of Italian language and culture (his mother was Italian), and a lecturer on historic Italian architecture who leads tours in Italy. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he earned a BA from Wesleyan University and a Bachelor of Architecture from MIT. After adding a diploma from the Ecole Americaine des Beaux Arts in Fontainebleau, France, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania with internationally famous architect Louis I. Kahn, was awarded graduate degrees in both architecture and urban planning, and remained in Philadelphia to practice architecture. Junker’s design awards come from such prestigious entities as the National Endowment for the Arts, the US General Services Administration, the Pennsylvania Art Commission, and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. His projects include the Philadelphia Mummers Museum, the St. Augustine Center at Villanova University, the new wing at the Delaware Agricultural Museum, and the Flynt Center for New England Life in Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, North Carolina State University, and other institutions.
As a writer, Junker is drawn to history and longer fiction—“complex structural works,” he notes, “much like buildings.” Manuscripts “on the shelf” include Orbis, a Renaissance tale, The Summer I Wanted to Be a Saint, a semi-autographical fantasy, and Under a Dim, Small Star, linked stories about a farm in Maine. Needing always to have some vital creative outlet, Junker began writing in earnest during an economic downturn when architectural work was barely to be had, rising at 4am so he could later go to the office. “I still follow such a schedule,” he says, “pre-dawn hours being best for creative work—quiet, free from distractions—a time when the imagination can roam and soar.” Further comparing designing architecture to writing, Junker relates a story told by his teacher, Louis Kahn. An artist can paint a cannon with square wheels to express the futility of war, Kahn said, but an architect must make the wheels round. “As art, writing provides opportunities for more expansive creative release,” Junker says, “and you don’t need teams of people—it happens in solitude, with only your imagination and patiently learned skills for guide.” Still, Junker finds he needs both design and writing to be fully content: “Michelangelo maintained that drawing is the root of all arts and sciences,” he reminds, “requiring as it does keen observation, holistic analysis, and then finally—disciplined interpretation of what is seen. In terms of rigor and experience, all creative work is one and the same.” Will he ever return to one of those old novel manuscripts on the shelf? “Life is short, and poses exciting new possibilities every day—who can say?”
Tunnell’s Boys, Junker’s recently published novel, grows from still other burning interests in his life—love of the sea, and world peace. Junker is a long time sailing enthusiast with a taste for wooden sailing craft and “bluewater” ocean cruising. He has captained various sailing craft on coastal voyages, including a schooner similar to the historic pilot craft in his novel, the Ebe W. Tunnell. Much of the tension and drama in Tunnell’s Boys derives from conflicted views on war and peace during the US war with Spain in 1898, a controversial war that, like today’s war in Iraq, was supposedly over in weeks, but in fact lingered on for years in tragic, agonizing fashion. This similarity is not accidental, “giving the book a contemporary edge,” as one reviewer put it. Junker expresses it in other words: “Truly meaningful art—and good fiction is art—says something worthwhile. Melville commented that if you’re going to spend years of your life working on something, make it worth those labors. Tunnell’s Boys, I hope, takes on issues of war and peace in an open, uncommitted way, leaving it for the reader to decide. It’s difficult though, for this writer at least, to judge how successful I’ve been. I’m always interested in hearing from my readers.”
