Tom Folsom is a writer living in New York City.
On March 5, 2013, the It Books imprint of HarperCollins published Folsom's definitive biography on Dennis Hopper, Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream, charting the actor's wide-ranging career and place in American popular culture in art, music, photography and film.
[1] Folsom graduated from the University of Georgia in 1996 with a degree in journalism.
Folsom, according to The New York Times, “deftly invokes a wacky world and the kind of characters celebrated by Jack Kerouac.”[2] The title comes from the Jack Kerouac quote, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn.”[3] He is the co-author of a biography of drug-kingpin Leroy Barnes, Mr. Untouchable: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Heroin's Teflon Don, written with its subject in Witness Protection.
He has also appeared on The Daily Show and NPR's Fresh Air.