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Tobias Wolff was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1945 and grew up in the Skagit River Valley of Washington State. He served in the U.S. army for four years, including one year in Vietnam.
He went on to graduate with honors from Oxford University and received a Wallace Stegner fellowship to Stanford University, where he received his Master's degree in writing.
Tobias Wolff is the author of two short story collections, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs [1981] and Back in the World [1985]. His memoir, This Boy's Life [1989], was recently made into a film starring Robert Duval.
"Most of my work is drawn in one way or another from my own experience. I have guessed ages and weights for a living, been a waiter and busboy and a night watchman, spent several months as a reporter and four years in the army." Wolff once commented on his writing. "The strange, nomadic, puzzling life I've led is my research." In reviewing Garden of the North American Martyrs, Raymond Carver wrote, "The work of a young master. I have not read a book of stories in years that given me such a shock of amazement and recognition - and such pleasure."
The 1989 Rea Award Jurors, Stanley W. Lindberg, C. Michael Curtis, and Joy Williams cited,
"While the contemporary short story appears in many guises and with varied intentions, the most likely shepherd of this variegated flock is Tobias Wolff, a story teller of relentless curiosity, moral industry and wit. For more than ten years, Wolff has been slowly and steadily producing a body of work that simply be overlooked by serious students and practitioners of the short story."
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