Tobias Wolff

Bellingham is uniquely situated in one of the most beautiful places on earth, marked by rugged mountains, serene islands, dense forests and dynamic waterways. It is a place of exploration and adventure, but also rest and relaxation. Unsurprisingly, the writers and writing that emerges from this area is also uniquely beautiful. This book club will explore this writing, focusing on writers from the Pacific Northwest and writing set in or about the Pacific Northwest, both fiction and non-fiction. This group meets the fourth Monday of the month at 7pm in the Writers' Corner on the mezzanine level of Village Books. Authors DO NOT attend.

Monday, October 27th, 7pm

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff

This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence.

Location: Street: 1200 11th St City: Bellingham, Province: Washington Postal Code: 98225-7015 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Tobias Wolff is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy’s Life (1989), and his short stories. He has also written two novels. Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he has taught classes in English and creative writing since 1997.

We welcome Wolff to Square Books at 5 p.m. at the mainstore location for a signing followed by a talk at the University in Bond Auditorium at 7 p.m.

Location: Street: 160 Courthouse Sq City: Oxford, Province: Mississippi Postal Code: 38655-3914 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Description

“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I know why the caged bird sings. About the Author

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi. She received her MFA from the Univ. of Michigan and has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the Univ. of Mississippi. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the Univ. of South Alabama. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the bones, for which she won the 2011 National Book Award, and was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Location: Street: 160 Courthouse Sq City: Oxford, Province: Mississippi Postal Code: 38655-3914 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Monday, May 20, 7:00 p.m.

OLD SCHOOL by Tobias Wolff

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.

Location: Street: 1010 El Camino Real City: Menlo Park, Province: California Postal Code: 94025-4349 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Tuesday, March 19, 7 p.m.

Catherine Wolff and Tobias Wolff, editor of and contributor to (respectively) the anthology Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, from Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero, will lead a panel discussion concerning the basic theme of the book: holding fast to faith/principles while at odds with the authority of the institution in which one is embedded.

Panel includes Tobias Wolff, Margaret Battin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Ethics, at the University of Utah and Samuel Brown, Assistant Professor, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Medical Ethics and Humanities, University of Utah School of Medicine and author of In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death.

Tobias Wolff is the author of the acclaimed memoir, This Boy's Life and several collections of short stories. del.icio.us Facebook Google StumbleUpon Twitter Yahoo

Location: Street: 1511 South 1500 East City: Salt Lake City, Province: Utah Postal Code: 84105 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Credit: Alberto Conti

Salman Rushdie in conversation with Tobias Wolff

Tuesday, September 25, 12:30 p.m.

Joseph Anton: A Memoir

SORRY - EVENT IS SOLD OUT!

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”

So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton.

Salman Rushdie is the author of eleven novels—including Grimus and Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker)—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published three works of nonfiction: The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991, and Step Across This Line, and coedited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a former president of American PEN.

Tobias Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989), and his short stories. His most recent collection of short stories, Our Story Begins, won The Story Prize for 2008. Other honors include the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award - both for excellence in the short story - the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. This event is co-sponsored by India Community Center.

Location: Street: 1010 El Camino Real City: Menlo Park, Province: California Postal Code: 94025-4349 Country: United States (tilføjet fra IndieBound)… (mere)

Tobias Wolff

AUTHOR TOBIAS WOLFF TO APPEAR AT THE HIGHLAND PARK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Award-winning author Tobias Wolff, whose book “The Barracks Thief” has been selected as the One Book, One Highland Park featured title, will appear at the Highland Park Public Library on Tuesday, July 15, at 7 p.m. Mr. Wolff will read from “The Barracks Thief” and discuss his writing. A question and answer session and book signing will follow the program.

Wolff’s “The Barracks Thief,” the summer title for the One Book One Highland Park community-wide read program, is a brief yet powerful tale of three young paratroopers waiting to be shipped out to Vietnam. The award-winning novella tells the story of the three young men who share an experience that affects each of them in profoundly different ways and is an insightful examination of compassion, perspective and tolerance. Discussions of the “Barracks Thief” are scheduled at the Highland Park Public Library and Borders during the month of July. And, to enhance the experience of reading the “Barracks Thief,” Mr. Wolff will speak about the book.

“The Barracks Thief” is the second title of the One Book, One Highland Park community-wide read program, a joint project with The City of Highland Park, the Highland Park Public Library and Highland Park Borders Books & Music. The program was initiated this spring to broaden and deepen an appreciation of reading and compel friends, family and neighbors to share their experience while reading the same book. The project seeks to engage the community in dialogue and bring them together by promoting tolerance and understanding about different points of view. The initial One Book, One Highland Park title for the community-wide read was “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” by Art Spiegelman.

In addition to “The Barracks Thief,” Wolff’s books include the memoirs “This Boy’s Life” and “In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War;” the novel “Old School;” and four collections of short stories, “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs,” Back in the World,” “The Night in Question,” and most recently, “Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories.” He has also edited several anthologies. Wolff’s work has been translated widely and has received numerous awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, both the PEN/Malamud and the Rea Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford.

“An Evening with Tobias Wolff” at the Highland Park Public Library is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. The program begins at 7 p.m. and will conclude with a book signing of Mr. Wolff’s work. The program is also presented by the City of Highland Park and the Highland Park Borders Books & Music. To reserve a seat, call (847) 432-1573, ext. 124.

The Highland Park Public Library strives to provide the highest quality Library services to community members for life-long learning, cultural enrichment, and enjoyment. The Highland Park Public Library is located at 494 Laurel Avenue, Highland Park. For more information, please call (847) 432-0216. (kmaziarz)… (mere)

Tobias Wolff læser fra Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories.

In the 1980’s, along with his contemporaries Raymond Carver and Andres Dubus, Tobias Wolff was at the core of the renaissance of the short story. Later he modernized the memoir with his bestselling childhood saga, This Boy’s Life. With a new collection compiling stories both old and new, Tobias Wolff proves why he is still one of today's most vital voices. (ablachly)… (mere)