Tom Dolby's debut novel, The Trouble Boy, concerns a young gay freelance writer in Manhattan. It was followed by the boarding school novel The Sixth Form (2008), set in an elite Massachusetts prep school. Dolby's first young adult novel, Secret Society, was published by Katherine Tegen Books at HarperCollins in October 2009. Its followup, The Trust: A Secret Society Novel, will be released in February 2011.

He was also the co-editor, with the novelist Melissa de la Cruz, of the personal essay anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men (2007), featuring works by Armistead Maupin, Ayelet Waldman, Andrew Solomon, Cindy Chupack, Simon Doonan, Gigi Levangie Grazer, David Ebershoff, and others. A reality television show inspired by the anthology, entitled Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, will air on the Sundance Channel in Winter 2010. Dolby and de la Cruz will serve as Consulting Producers.

Dolby's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Out. A personal essay of his appears in the anthology Gay Men Write About Growing Up (2006). He was a 2005 and 2010 Library Laureate for the San Francisco Public Library, and was one of Instinct magazine’s Leading Men of 2004.

Dolby was born in London and raised in San Francisco, and is a graduate of The Hotchkiss School and Yale University. He is the son of American businessman and engineer Ray Dolby and NARAL activist and fundraiser Dagmar Dolby.

He currently lives in Manhattan and Wainscott, New York. In June 2008, his engagement to Andrew Frist was announced. Dolby and Frist were legally married in Connecticut in April 2009, and celebrated their union with a wedding ceremony and reception for family and friends in Sonoma, California in September 2009. Dolby and Frist have helped raise over $150,000 towards the cause of marriage equality.