Tom Healy is a writer and poet. He left his family's farm and the dirt roads of Mount Vision, NY to study philosophy at Harvard and later received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia. He teaches at NYU and is a visiting professor at The New School. He has also taught at Pratt, the Robert Frost Place and the Goree Institute in Dakar.
Healy is the chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which oversees the Fulbright program worldwide. He was appointed to the board by President Obama in 2011.
A veteran of the New York art scene, Healy spent his early career running a consulting company to museums, film festivals and arts organizations around the world. He then opened one of the first galleries in Chelsea in the early '90's, showing many young artists who went on to prominence. Later, Healy served as president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where he led rebuilding efforts for the downtown arts community after 9/11. Mayor Michael Bloomberg honored him with the New York City Arts Award in 2006.
Healy's first book of poems, What the Right Hand Knows, was a finalist for the 2009 LA Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award. His poems and essays about contemporary artists have appeared in the Paris Review, Yale Review, BOMB, Salmagundi, Tin House, Drunken Boat and numerous other journals, anthologies and artist books. His new chapbook, Bruised, will be out in the spring of 2012.
In addition to his work with Fulbright, Healy is a trustee of the O, Miami Poetry Festival and public arts presenter, Creative Time. He had been a member of President Clinton's White House Council on HIV/AIDS and has traveled the world for microfinance projects and AIDS prevention efforts.
Healy lives in New York, Miami and Washington. His life partner, Fred Hochberg, is chairman of the United States Export-Import Bank.
