His father is the poet and translator, Willis Barnstone, and his sister, Aliki Barnstone is a well-known poet. In the family tradition, Tony Barnstone has done a number of translations and anthologies. He is the author of Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Selected Poems of Wang Wei (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1991), The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1996), and Literatures of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. His poetry, translations, essays on poetics, and fiction have appeared in dozens of American literary journals, from APR to Agni.