Thomas Douglas Jones was born in Aurora, Illinois on January 26, 1945. While still a teenager, he joined the Marines. He was discharged after being savagely beaten in a boxing match and mistakenly given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1970 and a master's in fine arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
At the age of 47, he was recovering from alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs and working nights as a janitor in a high school. He mailed an unsolicited, fictionalized Vietnam War story entitled The Pugilist at Rest to The New Yorker. It was printed in 1991 and won the O. Henry Award in 1993 for best short story. His short story collections include The Pugilist at Rest, which was nominated for a National Book Award; Cold Snap: Stories; and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine. He died from complications of diabetes on October 14, 2016 at the age of 71.
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