Thomas McCarthy was born in Mallow, Co. Cork Ireland and educated there and in Dublin. He has lived in France and Ireland. Since 1971, he has made his home in Peterborough, UK.

His stories have been published in PEN New Fiction 1 & 2; Sunk Island Review; Paris Transcontinental; The Literary Review; Cimarron Review; New Irish Writing; The Irish Press; StoryQuarterly. A collection of stories, The Last Survivor, was published in 1985. Citron Press published a novel A Fine Country in May 2000. A further collection of stories, Finals Day & Other Stories, was published in October 2002. His essay "At Least You'll Never Starve" is in the collection Writers On The Job, published by Hopewell Publication in the USA in 2008. At present, he is at work on another novel, Flannery's World, and a trilogy of linked stories called Morning Has Broken.