John J. Healey was born and raised in New York City. He studied medicine in Granada, Spain but left the field and began a 12-year career in motion pictures. In 1998, Healy directed the documentary Federico García Lorca and in 2010 The Practice of the Wild, a portrait of poets Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison.
His first novel Emily & Herman was published in 2013, followed by The Samurai of Seville, in 2016. Its sequel, The Samurai's Daughter, was published in 2019. A fifth novel, April in Paris, will be published by Arcade in July 2021.
