Photo: Mark Coggins from San Francisco / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Tobias Wolff earns my respect through sheer honesty. This Boy's Life lays out a rough, complicated boyhood without flinching, and that kind of candor is far rarer than people think; memoir collapses into vanity the moment a writer starts flattering himself, and Wolff never does. There's a quiet symmetry to his life too, from Birmingham to teaching at Stanford, that reads like one of his own stories. The PEN/Faulkner and PEN/Malamud awards confirm what readers already feel: he's a master of the short form precisely because he trusts plain truth over decoration. I suspect his students absorbed that lesson better than any craft manual could teach.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Tobias Wolff
- Name (Japanese)
- トバイアス・ウルフ
- Reading
- とばいあす・うるふ
- Born
- June 19, 1945 (age 81)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Gemini / Rooster
- Origin
- Birmingham, Alabama, United States
- Occupation
- novelist / writer / autobiographer / screenwriter / university teacher
2. Background
- University
- Stanford University
Awards & achievements
- 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
- Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2006 PEN/Malamud Award
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | Old School | — | |
| Notable work | This Boy's Life | — |
6. Links
Frequently asked questions
When was Tobias Wolff born?
Born June 19, 1945 (age 81).
Where is Tobias Wolff from?
Tobias Wolff is from Birmingham, Alabama, United States.
What does Tobias Wolff do?
Tobias Wolff works as novelist, writer, autobiographer, screenwriter, university teacher.
What is Tobias Wolff known for?
Notable works include Old School, This Boy's Life.
Novelist — see all → · Writer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.