Crummey was the recipient of the inaugural Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, and his first collection, Arguments with Gravity (Quarry Press, 1996), received the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry. His debut novel, River Thieves (Random House, 2002), won the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Winterset Award and the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award, and was short-listed for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Galore (Random House, 2009) received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean) and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award, and was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
Crummey lives in St. John’s with his wife and family.