Tom Sykes was born in Portsmouth in 1979. He was educated at the LSE, the University of East Anglia and Goldsmiths College. He has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia and lived and worked as a journalist and teacher in India, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Tom’s writing has appeared in The Daily Telegraph and The London Magazine among many others. Since 2005, he has co-edited and contributed to 3 anthologies of hitchhiking stories that have sold 20,000 copies worldwide. The first, No Such Thing as a Free Ride? was serialized in The Times and named The Observer’s Travel Book of the Month. Tom won the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Just Back’ travel writing prize in 2011.

Tom is now pursuing PhD studies at Goldsmiths College and teaches creative writing and journalism at the University of Portsmouth. He has also lectured at the Universities of Liverpool and Malaysia. He is currently working on With Daisy in Manila, a memoir of his time surviving a Third World megacity with his then partner and four year old stepdaughter.

You can find out more about Tom at tomgsykes.wordpress.com.