Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff was born on June 19, 1945 in Menlo Park, CA. He
teaches creative writing at Stanford University where he is the Ward W. and
Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He writes
short stores, memoirs, and novels. In addition to other awards, he received the National
Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2015. He has written over ten books,
short stories and collections.
Old School is his first novel and was published in 2003 after three portions of the
story had appeared in the New Yorker. It is the story of a boy at a prestigious boy's prep
school in the northeastern United States in the early 1960s. Reading the End (2010)
reviewed the book, and focused on how the it discussed ". . . adolescence and creativity,
imitation and influence. Wolff does a superb job of exploring the way teenagers try
on different versions of them themselves, test-driving personalities to see how they go
over with the world. . . . What made the book wonderful . . . was Wolff's wicked
sense of humor."