Tobias Wolff, an award-winning writer and the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford University, is considered one of the U.S.’s best short story writers. In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), Back in the World (1985), The Night in Question (1997), and Our Story Begins (2008) offer a rich selection of intriguing stories about everyday, ordinary life that have led some critics to compare his fiction writing to that of Chekhov and the Irish writer William Trevor.
For his short fiction, Wolff has been honored with the Rea Award, the O. Henry Prize, and the Story Prize, while his novella, The Barracks Thief, received the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1985. This Boy’s Life, a memoir of of growing up in Washington State with an abusive stepfather, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was made into a 1989 feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In Pharoah’s Army, a memoir of his service in the Vietnam War as an Army Special Forces lieutenant, was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2015, Wolff received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, and the year before, he earned the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement from Oregon State University.
During his time as a Montgomery Fellow, Wolff delivered the lecture, “Luck and Work: A Writer’s Life,” and visited several classes to discuss writing fiction and memoir, the challenges and joys of being a writer, and the power of literature to change one’s life with faculty and students.