Speaking of Stories

transforming short stories from the page to the stage

 

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TOBIAS WOLFF

Tobias Wolff (b. 1945). Although Wolff is known chiefly for his short story collections, Back in the World (1985), In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), and The Night in Question (1996), he has also published a short novel, The Barracks Thief (1984), and two memoirs. In the first, This Boy's Life (1989), he recalled his parents' divorce and subsequent family dramas. These include wanderings with his mother through the West and Northwest; arguments with his abusive stepfather; occasional contact with his real father, who was a habitual liar later imprisoned for fraud; and years of separation from his brother Geoffrey, who eventually became a writer himself.

This Boy's Life won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography and was made into a movie. Wolff's second memoir, In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994), mostly deals with his military service in Vietnam. Today, Wolff teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

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