Thomas Coraghessan Boyle (born December 2, 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published thirty one novels and more than 150 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.
He was previously a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
T. C. Boyle was born Thomas John Boyle, the son of Thomas John Boyle, a school bus driver, and his wife Rosemary Post Boyle (later Rosemary Murphy), a school secretary. He grew up in Peekskill, New York and changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was 17 after an ancestor of his mother. He received a B.A. in English and History from the State University of New York at Potsdam (1968), an M.F.A. (1974) from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. (1977) from the University of Iowa.
In Understanding T. C. Boyle, Paul William Gleason writes, "Boyle's stories and novels take the best elements of Carver's minimalism, Barth's postmodern extravaganzas, García Márquez's magical realism, O'Connor's dark comedy and moral seriousness, and Dickens' entertaining and strange plots and brings them to bear on American life in an accessible, subversive, and inventive way."
Many of Boyle's novels and short stories explore the baby boom generation, its appetites, joys, and addictions. His themes, such as the often-misguided efforts of the male hero and the slick appeal of the anti-hero, appear alongside brutal satire, humor, and magical realism. His fiction also explores the ruthlessness and the unpredictability of nature and the toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment.
Boyle has published eleven collections of short stories, including Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994). His short stories frequently appear in the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly and Playboy, as well as on the radio show Selected Shorts.
Boyle has said Gabriel García Márquez is his favorite novelist. He is also a fan of Flannery O'Connor and Robert Coover.
Boyle is married to Karen Kvashay. They have three children and live in Montecito near Santa Barbara, California. Their home was imperiled in the 2017 Thomas Fire which consumed 440 square miles and over 1,000 structures in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, killing a firefighter in the latter. The fires denuded drought-stricken hillsides of vegetation and torrential rains in January 2018 subsequently dislodged immense boulders and precipitated mudslides which destroyed over one hundred homes and killed almost two dozen of his neighbors. Over 10,000 people were evacuated from Montecito as a result of the sequence of natural disasters. Boyle extensively documented both calamities on his website, and additionally in an article for The New Yorker.
Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines Fiction Award for the Short Story, 1977.
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1977.
The St. Lawrence Award for Fiction, best story collection of the year, 1980 (Descent of Man).
The Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, 1981 ("Mungo Among the Moors", excerpt from Water Music).
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1983.
The Paris Review's John Train Humor Prize, 1984 ("The Hector Quesadilla Story").
Commonwealth of California, Silver Medal for Literature, 55th Annual Awards, 1986 (Greasy Lake).
Editors' Choice, New York Times Book Review, one of the 16 best books of the year, 1987 (World's End).
PEN/Faulkner Award, best novel of the year, 1988, for World's End.
O. Henry Award, 1988. "Sinking House", from The Atlantic Monthly.