T.C. Boyle : Uncovering One of Literature's Top Cats

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle or T.C. Boyle is an American short story writer and novelist who was born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948 in Peekskill, New York. He earned his BA in English and History from the State University of New York and his MFA and PhD from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Boyle is currently a Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Despite the fact that T.C. Boyle was born in New York, his stay at the Western frontier to pursue his studies was one of the main things that had influenced some of his early works. It is usually shown in the American preoccupations and settings of his stories. Another event in Boyle’s life which inspired many of his short stories and novels was the post-World War II Baby Boom(1940s-1960s). This generation’s appetites, joys and addictions were the motivations for stories like Modern Love and The Road to Wellville.

Boyle’s pieces are famous for its unusual 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 magic realism. His fiction has been compared to that of Mark Twain’s because it combines humor and social exploration as it deals with the ruthless and unpredictable toll of nature and the human society on the environment. He is also renowned in his historical novels which have been thoroughly researched but nevertheless possessing bizarre and comedic bits.

Some of Boyle’s early achievements include a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim in 1988. After such, he received numerous literary awards like the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel World’s End, the PEN/Malamud Prize, the PEN/West Literary Prize, the Commonwealth Gold Medal for Literature, National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for prose excellence as well as six O. Henry Awards for short fiction, multiple Best American Short Story awards and Drop City is a National Book Award Finalist.

T.C. Boyle presently lives in Santa Barbara with his wife Karen Kvashay and three children Kerrie, Milo and Spencer.


Submitted by: Stephanie Grace C. Lucero     R54     1-BSM AMF