Tom Hardy
Author Bio
TG Hardy’s short stories and essays have appeared in Narrative Magazine, The William & Mary Review, the Jackson Hole Writers Conference 25th Anniversary Anthology, Open Window Review, Faircloth Review, and elsewhere. His debut novel, WHERE THE SABIÁ BIRD SINGS, was published in the fall of 2023.
Tom has worked as a greenskeeper on a golf course, a deckhand on a sailing yacht, a sorority busboy, a navy fighter pilot, a screen actor, an advertising intern, and a manager of a succession of consumer brands and their international franchises.
He spent what he considers his formative years in Rio de Janeiro, attended high school on Long Island’s north coast, graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in liberal arts, and studied advanced Portuguese on a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. After military service, he earned a graduate degree from The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
As a family, the Hardys lived in several New England states, then overseas in Sydney, and Rio de Janeiro, and afterward the Connecticut suburbs of Manhattan. When their two sons went off to university, Tom and Pam moved to the city so that Pam could earn a graduate degree in social work. They currently live in Denver, where two-thirds of their grandchildren and half of their grand dogs live. The rest live, most conveniently, in the winter vacationland of Southwest Florida.
Tom chooses to read literary fiction mostly, or non-fiction that reads like fiction, with a preference for stories with intriguing characters and settings, written with attention to craft. Tom's running list of top-of-mind favorites [last updated 6/1/2023] includes the following:
- Writers & Lovers, by Lily King
- Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner
- Five Tuesdays in Winter, story collection by Lily King
- Paris in the Present Tense, by Mark Helprin
- The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer
- The Pacific (and other stories), by Mark Helprin
- Moonglow, by Michael Chabon
- All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
- Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
- Close Range, by Annie Proulx
- The Orchard, by Peter Heller
- Any Human Heart, by William Boyd
- Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
- Return to Oakpine, by Ron Carlson
- City of Thieves, by David Benioff
- Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
- Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
- Solo Faces, by James Salter
Poetry:
- Contemporary: "Windchime" by Tony Hoagland
- Classical: "Mandalay" by Rudyard Kipling
- Whimsical: "Masks" by Shel Silverstein