Tobias Wolff lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. He has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, the National Medal of Arts, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award.

"So absolutely clear and hypnotic . . . that a reader wants to take it apart and find some simple way to describe why it works so beautifully."--New York Times

"Wolff writes in language that is lyrical without embellishment, defines his characters with exact strokes and perfectly pitched voices, [and] creates suspense around ordinary events, locating the deep mystery within them."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A work of genuine literary art . . . as grim and eerie as Great Expectations, as surreal and cruel as The Painted Bird, as comic and transcendent as Huckleberry Finn." -Philadelphia Inquirer

"[This] extraordinary memoir is so beautifully written that we not only root for the kid Wolff remembers, but we also are moved by the universality of his experience." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Wolff writes in language that is lyrical without embellishment, defines his characters with exact strokes and perfectly pitched voices, [and] creates suspense around ordinary events, locating the deep mystery within them." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Wolff's genius is in his fine storytelling. This Boy's Life reads and entertains as easily as a novel. Wolff's writing and timing are superb, as are his depictions of those of us who endured the "50s." -Oregonian