After earning a BA in English at UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing at UC Irvine, he lived and worked in the region of Nebraska that inspired his critically acclaimed novels, Goodnight, Nebraska and To Be Sung Underwater. Tom has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and is the recipient of the James Michener prize and two California Book Awards. His short stories have been widely anthologized, and "What Happened to Tully" was the basis of the award-winning independent film: Tully. His solo young adult novel, Far Far Away, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2013.