Photo by Marion Ettlinger

ANDOVER, Mass.—Tobias Wolff, award-winning author of This Boy's Life and The Night in Question, will read from his new novel, Old School, at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, in Kemper Auditorium, Chapel Avenue, on the Phillips Academy campus. The reading, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Phillips Academy English department and the academy’s John M. Kemper Memorial Fund.

Wolff set Old School in 1960 at a New England boarding school with a strong literary tradition. According to Publisher’s Weekly, “This is Wolff’s first full-length novel (and his first book in seven years) and as such will likely receive much critical attention. Fans of the author’s short stories—regularly published in the New Yorker—should be pleased by his departure from form.”

Wolff is a professor of English and creative writing at Stanford University. Born in Birmingham, Ala., he briefly attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., described in his 1989 memoir, This Boy’s Life. He later was a Green Beret in Vietnam, relating those experiences in his 1994 memoir, In Pharoah’s Army. After earning B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University and an M.A. degree from Stanford, he published his first collection of short stories, In the Garden of North American Martyrs, in 1981. His novella, Barracks Thief, won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award as the best work of fiction in 1984. This Boy’s Life was made into a 1993 movie starring Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Barkin.

For more information, contact the Phillips Academy English department at 978-749-4185.