Tobias Wolff visits with studentsOn May 21, 2014 Tobias Wolff was presented with the Stone Award at the Portland Art Museum, where he gave an on-stage interview conducted by Professor Keith Scribner, followed by a reception and book signing.  Wolff gave a free public reading, lecture and book signing the following day on the OSU campus.

Tobias Wolff’s books include the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army; the short novel The Barracks Thief; four collections of stories, In The Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, The Night in Question, and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories; and the novel Old School. His work is translated widely and has received prestigious awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Rea Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Fairfax Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature,

Wolff

the PEN/Malamud Award for Achievement in the Short Story, and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Humanities at Stanford.

The $20,000 Stone Award—one of the largest given by an American university for lifetime literary achievement—was established in 2011 by a generous gift from Vicki and Patrick Stone ’74.  The award’s inaugural recipient in 2012 was Joyce Carol Oates.

The Stones established the biennial prize to spotlight Oregon State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, a program known for mentoring students, building community and reaching out to underserved populations.