Tobias Wolff was born on June 19, 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the second son of Arthur Samuels Wolff and Rosemary Loftus Wolff. At the age of five, Tobias faced a family breakdown where he and his mother became estranged from his father and older brother, Geoffrey, due to the instability his father maintained in his family life . Wolff and his mother were constantly moving. They first lived in Florida, then moved to Utah in 1955 and finally settled in the Pacific Northwest, where his mother remarried a troublesome man, Dwight Hansen. They lived in Newhalem, Washington with Hansen and her three children. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Wolff attended Concrete High School until he left for The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where he falsified his credentials to be accepted. He attended the Hill School for a year, but did not graduate and ended up joining the military for four years. Wolff's family also did not reunite until 1961, when he saw his older brother and father again after eleven years. From 1964 to 1968, Wolff served in the United States Army Special Forces, where he was assigned to his post in Vietnam. After serving these years, Wolff traveled to England and enrolled at Oxford University. In 1972 he received his bachelor's degree from Oxford and in 1975 a master's degree from Oxford. Returning to America, he worked first as a journalist for the Washington Post, then in various restaurants in California. In 1975, he married Catherine Dolores Spohn, a teacher and social worker. They later had two sons and a daughter; Michael, Patrick and Mary Elizabeth. Wolff enrolled at Stanford University that same year and soon earned a master's degree from Stanford in 1978. At Stanford, he met and befriended other writers, including Raymond Carver. During this period, he supported himself by teaching. In addition to short stories, Tobias Wolff published a short story, The Barracks Thief (1984), and a memoir, This Boy's Life (1989). He has also edited short story anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories (1994). While pursuing his own writing, Wolff taught creative writing at Goddard College and Arizona State University. Currently, he lives with his family in upstate New York and teaches at Syracuse University. Wolff also influenced countless people, including the famous David Sedaris, an American comedian and author. Sedaris claims he is Wolff's "biggest fan" because he has read every word Wolff has ever written. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Wolff's work has won numerous literary awards. . He received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in 1975 to study creative writing at Stanford University and won creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Wolff received the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction for The Barracks Thief and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His book This Boy's Life: A Memoir won the Los Angeles Times Biographical Book Award. He also received a Whiting Foundation Award (1990), a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award (1994), and a Lyndhurst Foundation Award. (1994).