Author Tobias Wolff to speak at New Paltz in April 2010

Wolff will be fourth guest in college’s Distinguished Speaker Series

NEW PALTZ – Tobias Wolff, renowned novelist and memoir writer, will visit the State University of New York at New Paltz to take part in the college’s Distinguished Speaker Series at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 1, 2010, in McKenna Theatre.

Wolff will discuss his 2003 novel, “Old School,” which is required reading for all incoming students participating in the college’s composition program.

Pauline Uchmanowicz, English professor and director of the Composition Program, said the composition faculty is delighted that Wolff has been chosen as Distinguished Speaker for spring 2010.

“Tobias Wolff’s visit to our campus will offer students in the Composition Program a rare opportunity to make a connection between literary page and living author. It may even encourage some to undertake a writer’s life,” said Uchmanowicz.

Wolff’s other works include the memoirs “This Boy’s Life” and “In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War”; the short novel “The Barracks Thief”; 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.”

The prolific author is also considered one of the great contemporary masters of the short story.

“The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story,” Wolff said. He also said that short stories, like poems, demand a lot from their readers and the writer’s thrill is “working a miracle, making life where there was none” in the space of a few pages.

Wolff has edited several anthologies, among them “Best American Short Stories 1994,” “A Doctor’s Visit: The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov” and “The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories.” His work is 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; the Story Prize; and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford University in California.

Tickets for the event will go on sale in early 2010.

The college kicked off its inaugural Distinguished Speaker Series on Nov. 12, 2008. Each year, the series will feature two speakers, one in the fall and one in the spring.

The goal of the Distinguished Speaker Series is to connect community members, alumni, friends, faculty, staff, students and their families with well-known authors, policy makers and leaders, scientists, media experts, business people and other luminaries, on campus. The college received a generous gift from a donor to underwrite part of this series.

For more information, visit www.newpaltz.edu/speakerseries.